WAG Magazine September 2011

september 2011

living the art of

Chase finlay’s leap to stardom singing the body eclectic sculptural beauty McQueen’s visions in fabric

fall canvas

Neiman’s Sharkey – wow

Music Man Copland lives on

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I M AG I N E

T H E P L AC E S T H E Y W I L L G O .

21 Purchase Street • Rye, NY 10580 914.967.0464 • www.woodrowjewelers.com

september 2011

THE ART OF LIVING 12 ‘Fall’ing for the arts 16 BODYWORK 20 THE ART OF RETAIL 22 LEGENDS OF THE FALL 26 ART QUEST 30 a ‘note’ worthy life 34 LOST IN TRANSLATION 36 MIZNER MAGIC 38 THE DIGITAL EVOLUTION 40 TATTOO YOU 43 THE NATURAL 58 TWO FOR THE SHOW This rarefied “Seated Female Nude” (1648) by Jacob Adriaensz.

Backer is part of the Rembrandt show at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich Sept. 24-Jan. 8.

The sensuous medium (black and white chalk on blue paper) underscores the message.

60 Mon amour, CARAMOOR 63 OF PALETTES AND PALATES 66 THE first family OF MARTIAL ARTS

速

september 2011

47 way

Features

Outside in

51 wares

Designing woman.

54 wear

A perfect pairing.

67 week

Spaesthetics.

70 wine&dine Vintage art.

72 wheels

Metal mettle.

76 well

The art of limitation.

78 well

The right (hormonal) stuff.

79 watch

We’re out and about.

84 time

Upcoming events.

86 worthy

Arts venues and hotels.

87 wit

We wonder: Do you have an artist within?

88 class & sass

With Martha Handler and Jennifer Pappas

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WAGGERS

8

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10 Editor’s letter

Our WAG-savvy sales team will assist you in optimizing your message to captivate and capture your audience.

Contact them at (914) 358-0746.

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“A Light At The Door Has Always Meant A Warm Welcome.”

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Jennifer pappas

Dana Ramos

MICHAEL ROSENBERG

Bob Rozycki

ERIKA SCHWARTZ

Mary Shustack

8

Zoë Zellers

Martha and Jen, in evening wear from Neiman Marcus, get ready for WAG’s and the Wolf Conservation Center’s “howling” bash at Neiman Marcus. (See story on page 20.) Photograph by Susan Bowlus

480 Main Street, Armonk | (914) 765-0555

From the editor Georgette Gouveia

I

can remember the moment that I fell in love with the arts.

I was 4 years old and accompanying my grandmother and aunt on a doctor’s visit. The nurse gave me a lollipop and rather than lick it, I started composing a song about it in my head – or so I thought. When I realized everyone was listening to me sing, I stopped.

“No,” the doctor urged. “Continue.”

It would be the first of many encounters with the idea that there was perhaps nothing so powerful on this earth as the ability to create and to give actual expression to that creativity.

As our intrepid Waggers explore the arts this month, they’ve discovered anew that immersing yourself in the arts begets creativity.

Dana Ramos, for instance, uses the setting of her interview with playwright David Henry Hwang – a Chinese restaurant – as a metaphor for Sino-American relations in the Broadway-bound “Chinglish.” Home of the Month maven Jane Dove scopes out a truly modern house in Pound Ridge, wine expert Geoff Kalish looks at artistic labels and well doc Erika Schwartz weighs in on the right kinds of performance enhancement while her counterpart Michael Rosenberg considers the limits of the art of plastic surgery.

Exploring the arts also begets a certain synchronicity. Resident fashionista

Zoë Zeller braved the throngs at The Met’s Alexander McQueen blockbuster for a piece on the art of fashion, which references Roberto Dutesco, whose photographs turn up in a piece on the art of food by our gal about town Kelly Liyakasa, who also visits Caramoor, which collaborated with the landmark Copland House, which is the subject of a Mary Shustack piece. (Mary – who never met a museum, historic house or gift shop she didn’t like – also hit the Connecticut Art Trail.)

“It’s synergy,” Kelly says. Call it a dance of six degrees of separation.

And speaking of dance, I renew old acquaintance with the New York City Ballet – and my former life as an arts critic – for a cover profile on rising star Chase Finlay, a golden guy in every sense of the term.

It’s a dance of time, too, for September WAG isn’t merely about “The Art of Living.” It’s about September itself, a moment of cultural reawakening.

There are new things to experience, “Legends of the Fall” to watch in the coming season, and, of course, as contrary Class & Sass columnists Martha and Jen blissfully report, kiddies to send back to school.

What September and the arts have in common is that they afford us all an opportunity to dance to the music of time and reconnect with that creative spark, that voice within.

Save these dates!

WAG will be helping the Cross County Shopping Center celebrate its $250 million-plus makeover with a Retro Fashion show Oct. 16, featuring “Mad Men”-themed fashions from retailers bebe, H&M, AX Armani Exchange, Swarovski and others, along with models from Yours Truly. It’s all part of “RElaunch Celebration Week” Oct. 11 through 16.

It begins Oct. 11 with invited guests remembering when Cross County opened in 1954 as one of the first openair retail venues. Meanwhile, shoppers can enjoy private evening events bene-

fiting local charities and schools. A new public sculpture will be unveiled Oct. 13, while on Oct. 14, schools battle it out in a “Glee”-style competition.

A Flash Mob will inaugurate the new courtyard seating and gardens Oct. 15. Along with the fashion show Oct. 16, there will be makeovers at Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret and other retailers; a chance to revamp your golf swing, courtesy of Edwin Watts Golf Shop; and a children’s fashion show in the new Zoo Zone play area.

Look for more details in the October WAG.

Oops!

The design appearing in the photograph on the top of page 59 in the July WAG accompanying Patricia Espinosa’s “Anchored in Taste” was incorrectly 10

credited. The design is by Susan Bednar Long and Christina Sullivan Roughan of Tocar Interior Design.

— GG

Our fall favorites

What are yours?

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419 MAIN STREET • ARMONK, NY 10504 914.273.9600

‘Fall’ing for the arts

By Georgette Gouveia

“Autumn in New York: Why does it seem so inviting?” So the Vernon Duke song asks.

Let us count the ways – limpid, canyon skies; the crisp scent in the air; the rustle of curling leaves, all of which say it’s time to go inside and inward to celebrate the sights and sounds of a new season.

The temperate seasons – spring and fall – are always associated with beginnings. But spring is more about nature’s reawakening, while autumn is about civilization’s. The clean crack of the spine of a new textbook, the return of your favorite shows with the promise of new adventures, Vernon Duke’s “thrill of first-nighting” fill the mind and flood the heart with possibilities.

This autumn, Fairfield and Westchester are all about anniversaries. The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville turns 10 with a salute to Steven Spielberg, while the Westport Country Playhouse, 80 years old, has been celebrating Tennessee Williams. And the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan gets set for its 90th birthday with a quartet of idiosyncratic artists.

Bad boys and girls abound. John Malkovich plays a serial killer at Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts, which is among the venues to simulcast Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at The Metropolitan Opera. And soprano Lauren Flanigan channels Lizzie Borden at the Copland House at Merestead in Mount Kisco Below is one critic’s take on what you must experience. It’s just a taste. But it’s enough to get the creative juices flowing.

Let the cultural indulgences begin.

Fairfield

Through September 10 – 12

“Suddenly Last Sumarts candidate, presents her mer” – Birthdays abound poetic responses to works at the Westport Country in the collection. Her Playhouse, which has show will be followed been busy celebrating by “James Prosek: Unthe centennial of TenNatural History,” featurnessee Williams and 80 ing the naturalist’s wateryears of quality playhouse colors (Oct. 21-Dec. 21). productions and educa(203) 254-2215, fairfield. tional programming. The edu/arts/bell_index.html. playhouse continues its September 24 – salute to Williams, who January 8 – “Drawgave this country some ings by Rembrandt, of its most haunting and His Students and Circle poetic works, with its proFrom the Collection duction of his 1958 play, of Maida and George about the savagery that Abrams” – Ever since lurks behind manipulaPeter C. Sutton, one of tion. It’s but a prologue the foremost authorities to a fall that includes the in northern Baroque art, playhouse’s Sept. 19 funbecame executive direcdraiser with Bernadette tor of the Bruce Museum Peters and its take on the “Colloquy for Clint: The Barn Door, in Greenwich, the Bruce Oak and the Laurel” by Joseph has become one of the Bard’s “Twelfth Night” His Saccio.

(Oct. 11-Nov. 5). “Sudgo-to places for Old Masdenly” tickets: $35-$65. (888) 927-7529, ters exhibits. Not only does this exhibit westportplayhouse.org. consider the marvelously grainy draftsThrough September 15 – manship of the man who put the Master “ekphrasis i: jeanne delarm-neri” – Just in Old Masters, it also plumbs the varied under a year old, The Bellarmine Mu- role of drawing in the creative process. seum of Art at Fairfield University has Rembrandt used drawing as a teaching already put itself on the arts map with tool, a blueprint for subsequent works and such treasures as Greco-Roman plaster an end in itself. While the Abrams Colleccasts, pre-Columbian vessels, 19th-cen- tion has been seen before, its rich holdings tury Southeast Asian sculptures, African in this subject have never before been the masks, 10 paintings from the Italian Re- focus of an exhibition. (203) 869-0376, naissance and Baroque periods and 20 brucemuseum.org. objects on loan from The Metropolitan September 25 – November 4 – Museum of Art’s Department of Medieval A Silvermine Quartet – The Silvermine Art and The Cloisters, its medieval wing. Arts Center in New Canaan, which turns Here DeLarm-Neri, a 2012 master of fine 90 in 2012, has an ability to create a group

of complementary solo shows every six weeks. Leading off the fall are four artists whose strength lies in their individualistic perspectives. The reclusive Larry Lewis turned photocopies of Victorian images, movie-star portraits and newspaper ads into brilliantly inked collage books. Nancy McTague-Stock’s aquatic works consider the athletic and artistic, constructive and destructive properties of water. Roxeanne Faber Savage’s prints explore her fascination with birds and utility wires and thus, the tension between nature and industry in the modern landscape. Joseph Saccio’s sculptural juxtapositions of the weighty and the fragile crystallize themes of myth and ritual, loss and rebirth. (203) 9669700, silvermineart.org.

October 7 – “Kings of Salsa” – Salsa sizzles. Choreographed by Roclan Gonzalez Chavez, this homage to the intoxicating Cuban beat melds hip hop, Afro-Caribbean moves, contemporary dance and the Cuban classics – mambo, rumba and the cha-cha – so beloved by the “Dancing With the Stars” set. It’s all backed by the nine-piece band Cuba Ashire, with its fiendish rhythms and soaring brass. “Kings of Salsa” is a bit of Havana in downtown Stamford. 8 p.m. at the Stamford Center for the Arts (SCA). $60, $50, $40, $30, plus SCA fees. (203) 325-4466, stamfordcenterforthearts.org.

October 8 – “Stories on the Green” – Shakespeare said that everyone has a story and the Fairfield Museum and History Center aims to find out if that is true. In this series of themed storytelling programs for adults, organized by Ina Chadwick’s MouseMuse Productions, everyday

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s “42nd Street Times Square, Manhattan” (2005) is part of “New York, New York! The 20th Century,” at the Katonah Museum of Art Oct. 2-Dec. 31.

people plunge into a tradition that dates at least from Homer. Amateurs as well as aspiring professionals are welcome. The series continues Dec. 8 and Feb. 9. Doors open 7 p.m. with the program at 7:30. $20. (203) 259-1598, fairfieldhs.org.

October 15 – The Stamford Symphony Orchestra – The orchestra opens its season at the Stamford Center for the Arts with a program of works by European and American composers that nonetheless keeps the focus on the U.S. On the bill are Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, nicknamed “From the New World” for its use of American folk themes and spirituals; ragtime king Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer;” Igor Stravinsky’s own “Ragtime” and George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F,” which is not as well-known as his “Rhapsody in Blue” but certainly its equal. 8 p.m., with a 3 p.m. repeat Oct. 16. There’s a “Behind the Baton” discussion with the conductor one hour before the concert and a “MusicKids” program at 1:45 p.m. Oct. 16. $73 / $58 / $42 / $22, plus SCA fees. (203) 325-4466, stamfordcenterforthearts.org.

October 29 – “Don Giovanni” – Fairfield University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts has garnered a reputation for presenting a superb array of the performing arts. Among its finest offerings – and toughest tickets – are “The Met: Live in HD” simulcasts of Metropolitan Opera productions, which combine the best in operatic and cinematic experiences. If you must limit yourself only to one, make it “Don G,” in which Mozart’s self-centered antihero (baritone Mariusz Kwiecien) and an increasingly textured score leap through time to touch us today. 1 p.m. live, 6 p.m. encore. $25, $20, $15. (203) 254-4010, (877) ARTS396, quickcenter.com; metoperafamily. org/metopera/broadcast/LiveinHD.aspx.

November 15 – “The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Kill-

er” – The Quick Center does love its bad boys. First, “Don Giovanni,” and now John Malkovich starring in a drama for an actor, two opera singers and an orchestra that is based on the life of Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Has any actor ever

This autumn, Fairfield and Westchester are all about anniversaries. The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville turns 10 with a salute to Steven Spielberg, while the Westport Country Playhouse, 80 years old, has been celebrating Tennessee Williams.

And the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan gets set for its 90th birthday with a quartet of idiosyncratic artists.

made moral ambivalence more palpably human? Malkovich has been terrific in heralded films (“Les Liaisons Dangereuses”) and underappreciated ones (as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as seen through the eyes of “their” Irish maid in “Mary Reilly”). In the darkly humorous, bleak and brutal “Comedy,” he gets a chance to send us reeling again. 8 p.m. $95, $85. (203) 254-4010, (877) ARTS-396, quickcenter.com.

January 28 – The Cast of “Beatlemania!” – The Ridgefield Playhouse for movies and the performing arts has developed into a premier venue for veteran 13

rockers like Gregg Allman (Sept. 2), Todd Rundgren (Sept. 11) and Ray Manzarek and Robby Kreiger of the Doors (Nov. 6) as well as tribute bands. But if you had to choose one trip down rock’s Memory Lane, you might want to wait for the cast of “Beatlemania!” to roll into town. The Fab Four were the intersection of great music, an unusual group dynamic in which the sum of the parts was equal to the whole and a cultural moment. 8 p.m. $47.50. (203) 438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

Westchester

Beginning September 12 – “Exploring Poetry” – In this series, which takes place on three consecutive Mondays, participants will read and write ekphrastic poems and prose (inspired by the visual arts) – a tradition that dates at least from Homer and that includes W.H. Auden’s peerless “Musée des Beaux Arts,” in which a Brueghal painting becomes a metaphor for the peculiarities of human suffering.

The workshops are held from 6 to 8 p.m. in Greenburgh Town Hall and are limited to 12 participants. To pre-register, email Sarah Bracey-White at bracey0114@aol. com. For questions, call (914) 682-1574.

For directions, visit greenburghartsandculture.org.

September 17 – “The Tribute to Steven Spielberg” – In honor of its 10th anniversary, the Jacob Burns Film Center and Media Arts Lab in Pleasantville will present its 2011 Vision Award to Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg, whose poignant flights of fancy (“E.T.”) and searing portraits of history (“Schindler’s List”) have both defined and re-imagined the cinematic landscape. All proceeds will benefit the center’s education and outreach programs, which touch more than 11,000 students each year. Oscar-winning director and newly elected board member Ron Howard is among the salute’s co-chairpersons. For ticket information, contact Kim Turner at kturner@burnsfilmcenter.org or (914) 773-7663, ext. 429.

September 23-25 – “Fall Festival” – The Caramoor Center for Music and the Art isn’t just about its acclaimed international summer festival. The third annual fall fest begins Sept. 23 with the dynamic Alan Gilbert leading The New York Philharmonic and violin virtuoso Augustin Hadelich in a performance of works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. On Sept. 24, Broadway’s luminous Kelli O’Hara is set to shine in a solo concert. Things wrap up Sept. 25 with “The Future Is Now,” spotlighting young musicians in Caramoor’s mentoring programs. New York Phil: $44-$112.50. Kelli O’Hara: $28-$67. “Future”: $25. (914) 232-1252, caramoor.org.

September 24 – January 8 – “Elihu Vedder: Voyage on the Nile” 14

John Malkovich stars in “The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer,” at Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts Nov. 15.

– Orientalism refers to art of the Middle East from a Western perspective. One of the greatest of the Orientalists was painter and poet Elihu Vedder, an American expatriate who in 1889 embarked on a trip down the Nile that he would come to regard as the voyage of a lifetime. His depictions of creamy dunes, sphinxes, pyramids, mosques and minarets – haunting in their solitude – recall the work another great Orientalist, Scottish painter David Roberts. But they also reflect the artist’s view of a foreign subject and thus in a sense serve as portraits of the artist as well.

(914) 963-4550, hrm.org.

September 25 – December 18 – “Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels” – Every two years, the Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize is awarded to an artist deemed worthy of an early-career survey and catalog. This year’s prize goes to Dana Schutz, whose Surrealistic, cartoon-like drawings and paintings pair the seemingly unimaginable. Michael Jackson and Old Masters, smoking and oceans, humans and monkeys: No juxtaposition is beyond Dana Schutz’s adventurous mind in this 10-year retrospective of 30 paintings and 12 drawings. (914) 251-6100, neuberger.org.

October 1 and 2 – Westchester Philharmonic – The season opens in a big way with conductor Raymond Leppard leading the orchestra in Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3; Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations”; Dvorak’s Rondo for Cello and Orchestra, featuring Lynn Harrell; and a performance of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” that pulls out all the (organ)

stops. Elgar wrote an optional part for a pipe organ in “Enigma Variations” that’s rarely heard. But the Phil will be rolling out the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College’s magnificent Flentrop organ for the occasion. 8 p.m. Oct. 1, 3 p.m. Oct. 2. $25-$90. (914) 682-3707, westchesterphil.org.

October 2 – December 31 – “New York, New York! The 20th Century”— It may not be as beautiful as Paris but few cities have appealed more to artists than the glamorous Big Apple. Organized by the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., this exhibit features more than 50 works from the Norton collection, including paintings, photographs, sculptures and works on paper by the likes of Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Stuart Davis, Andreas Feininger, William Gropper, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Reginald Marsh and Edward Steichen, among others. At the Katonah Museum of Art. (914) 232-9555, katonahmuseum.org.

November 19 – “The Importance of Being Ernest” – Anyone who had the pleasure of seeing the Aquila Theatre perform its 20th-century reinterpretation of “The Iliad” witnessed one of the great tours de force in recent theatrical memory.

Now the company does for Oscar Wilde what it did for Homer, offering a fresh take on a classic, in this case Wilde’s much ado about two young men who twist the truth into pretzel shapes and wind up with more excitement than they bargained for.

3 and 8 p.m. at the Emelin Theatre, Mamaroneck. $40; $20 for students. (914) 698-0098, emelin.org.

December 4 – “Murder, Mayhem and the Mall” – For those who can’t get enough of Casey Anthony, O.J. and their ilk, Copland House at Merestead – the historic music center’s joint venture with Westchester County in Mount Kisco – offers this concert inspired by women who may have gotten away with murder, featuring soprano Lauren Flanigan. The centerpiece is Robert Convery’s monologue opera “The Passion of Lizzie Borden,” about the Fall River, Mass. spinster who took an ax and well, you know. She was acquitted in a court of law but not in the imagination. $25; $20 for members and $10 for students with ID. (914) 7884659, coplandhouse.org.

April 21 – Corella Ballet Castilla y León – Balletomanes know the heavenly American Ballet Theatre star Angel Corella to be one of the finest danseurs around.

What they may not know is that he has his own company, the Spanish-based Corella Ballet Castilla y León, which will be presenting classical, neoclassical and contemporary dances by Christopher Wheeldon, Clark Tippet and Stanton Welch at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center.

Corella himself and his sister Carmen will dance the pas de deux “Soleá,” choreographed by flamenco dancer María Pagés.

It is, like Corella himself, muy caliente.

8 p.m. Concert Hall. (914) 251-6200, artscenter.org. n

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body work

Glorified or brutalized, it’s essential to the artistic experience

By Georgette Gouveia

Andrea Sacchi’s “Marcantonio Pasqualini Crowned by Apollo” (1630) celebrates the Baroque castrato Pasqualini, the leading male soprano of his day. He receives the laurel of victory from Apollo, god of music, whose nudity trumpets what Pasqualini has lost. Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is at once the very temple of our souls, a vehicle of necessity, a source of great pleasure and, at the same time, the Shakepearean “mortal coil” that we will one day each have to shuffle off on our way to “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

No wonder, then, we are so conflicted about the human body: Can’t live with it.

Certainly can’t live without it.

For artists, the body is both a required course and the mirror they hold up to time. And so their art becomes the embodiment of eras past – the linear sleekness of ancient Egypt; the draped dynamism of “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome;” the mortification of the flesh in the religious, plague-ridden Middle Ages; the resurrection of GrecoRoman sensuality in the Renaissance; the corporeal excesses of the Baroque; the grace of the 18th-century’s Enlightenment; and the exaltation of the female nude, after centuries of heroic guys, in the bourgeois, industrial 19th century.

The fractured image

Perhaps nowhere has the idea of the artistic body as the landscape of a time been seen to such devastating effect as in the war-riddled Atomic Age that was the 20th century.

There the scientific revelations that would culminate in the atomic bomb and the political and economic turmoil that would result in two world wars would in turn lead to depictions of a mechanized, fragmented body in art as artists countered Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism and Communism with some “isms” of their own – Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

“The body was not as whole as one thought it was,” says Helaine Posner, chief curator of the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College.

Even when the body belongs to one of the most iconic sex symbols of that century.

In the Neuberger’s “Marilyn Monroe,” a 1954 oil on canvas, the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning portrays the molten goddess as so many shards of stained glass – a slash of red for a mouth, kohl rims for eyes, slabs of red for breasts, a half-moon of yellow hair, the woman as vampire.

Not surprisingly, the work has been decried by many feminists. But Posner – who has devoted much of her career to women in art and feminist art – deems it beautiful.

And indeed, if “truth is beauty,” as Keats said, then “Marilyn Monroe” is a beautiful depiction that unwittingly prefigures not only the destruction of an actress who came to believe she was just her body, but the further disintegration of the body in the AIDS crisis at the end of the 20th century.

Still the body would make something

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of a comeback in the conservative ’80s and “happy days are here again” ’90s as abstract art gave way to representation.

But post-AIDS, in the age of the Internet, the body literally lost its substance.

“You go from something that was the most tangible, most real thing there is,” Posner says, to something that is virtual, viral, a ghost.

One of the most talked-about images in the blockbuster Alexander McQueen show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan wasn’t an actual couture creation but a holograph of Kate Moss set to the score of “Schindler’s List.”

The recent marriage of McQueen and The Met speaks not only to the notion of high fashion as fine art – see Zoë Zellers’ piece in this issue – but the idea that when it comes to the body, the arts and popular culture are on the same page, both in their use of various media, especially anything digital, and in their greater acceptance of body types – even in the age of airbrushed, democratized beauty. Now this doesn’t mean you’re going to see a flabby figure like the one captured in The Met’s “Naked Man, Back View,” a 1991-92 oil on canvas by Lucien Freud, in ad campaigns anytime soon. (After all, the ad world Photoshops even the likes of Julia Roberts, for goodness sake.) But you will see the take-it-or-leave-it voluptuousness of Queen Latifah, the ripe sensuality of Helen Mirren and the ethnic beauty of Kim

Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez in TV ads and the fashion pages – something that would’ve been unheard of 50 years ago.

It also means that pop performance art, like fine performance art, has become unafraid to play the “truth is beauty” game.

Both Lady Gaga and Cuban-born Tania Bruguera, who had a one-woman show at the Neuberger last year, have been known to don raw meat in their artistic statements.

“I like the way Lady Gaga has taken Madonna to the next level,” says Bartholomew F. Bland, director of curatorial affairs at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, who’s at work on a show about art and fashion. “She’s not afraid to be ugly if it makes an interesting point.”

The wayward gaze

One of the interesting points that both Bruguera and Gaga have made in sporting meat is that women have often been treated as such. When we think of the body in art and popular culture, we usually think of the sexualized, objectified female body.

That’s because most visual stylists have been men, either because – take your pick here – women are thought not as visual (critic Camille Paglia) or lacked the opportunity men had (art historian Linda Nochlin).

But history doesn’t necessarily bear out the idea that women have always been the primary sex symbols in culture. In her provocative book “Male Trouble: A Crisis

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in Representation” (Thames and Hudson, 1997), art historian Abigail SolomonGodeau argues that throughout most of art, the active, often undraped male figure held pride of place in the all-important category of history painting (religious, mythological and allegorical works), reaching an apotheosis in Neoclassical (turn-of-the-19th-century) Paris. It was only later with the rise of bourgeois values and the emphasis on everyday life that the female body came to the fore.

While both Bland and Posner caution against generalizations – “You could equally make a case for the female nude in art history if you sweep through the galleries at The Met,” Bland says – they acknowledge that men and women have paid different prices for the objectification of the female body.

If, as Posner says, “men had power and women’s power resided in their beauty,” then, as Bland adds, “great male beauty has been suspect.”

The price of having a beautiful male body is its subjugation – in war, the sports arena, the boardroom and Internet innuendo.

“It goes back to the central figure in Western art, which is the crucified Christ,” Bland says.

Both art history and the movies are filled with Christ figures – stoic, tormented outsiders, be they the St. Sebastians of Renaissance art or any number of Marlon Brando characters from the bloodied but

Who says art has to be classically beautiful? Not Lucien Freud, who feasted on flab in canvases like “Naked Man, Back View” (1991-92). Copyright The Estate of Lucian Freud. Photograph courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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unbowed dockworker in “On the Waterfront” (1954) to the brutalized gunslinger in “One-Eyed Jacks” (1961).

The price of the beautiful female body, on the other hand, has been its strictures, both literal and professional. But as opportunities for women have grown, so have their chances to portray men the way men have seen them.

Women haven’t leapt at them, however. In the stunning photographic series “Crying Men” (Steidl, 2004), Sam TaylorWood turns her lens on weeping male movie stars – Daniel Craig, Laurence Fishburne, Ryan Gosling, Jude Law and Paul Newman, among them – as a metaphor for grief and loss. Their very fame ensures their individuality. But Taylor-Wood also portrays them with unobtrusive compassion. Even her study of Robert Downey Jr. – in which he appears like the great male Neoclassical nudes, with both arms thrown up around his head – is about the actor’s vulnerability, his mortality.

One artist who tried to look at men the way they looked at women was Sylvia Sleigh, who created a series of male nudes in the 1970s. (Her other work includes the 14-panel “Invitation to a Voyage,” 1979-1999, which she donated to the Hudson River Museum.)

“She talked about how much she enjoyed male beauty and put roses behind the ears of her male nudes,” Bland says. “But they’re very masculine. …In all of Sylvia’s nudes, they retain their humanity.” n

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Beth Sharkey on the Neiman Marcus aesthetic touch

20

Beth Sharkey, general manager of Neiman Marcus in White Plains, wears a Dolce and Gabbana red jacquard dress ($1,295).

Jewelry: Chanel cuff ($950); Alexis Bittar necklace ($695); Jose and Maria Barerra bracelet and bangle ($365, $115); Stephen Dweck earrings (trunk show exclusive).

The art of retail

A

t Neiman Marcus, aesthetics matter.

The Dallas-based retailer, whose White Plains store anchors one end of The Westchester mall, has a longstanding history of presenting upscale fashion with an eye to elegance and a subtle approach to storytelling. While apparel from the likes of Prada, Armani and Valentino may in itself be art-inspired – see related story – the store’s visual displays and accompanying catalog equally illustrate attention to creating a well-executed, beautiful shopping experience each season.

It was former Chair and President Stanley Marcus – whose father and aunt founded Neiman’s in 1907 – who began the innovative push to place artwork in retail space, and the White Plains store is no exception. Actual fine art pervades The Westchester’s Neimie’s, from the metal sculptures of suited figures in the men’s department to the botanicals that make the third floor ladies’ room such an oasis.

But the artistic touches don’t end there. They can be seen in the plasticity of the mannequins; the flourishes of Bordeaux, the color du jour; the astrological signs that adorn the store’s Zodiac Restaurant; and the blackand-white fashion prints in the office of General Manager Beth Sharkey, whose own polished look conjures the Hitchcock blonde.

The aesthetic approach, however, is not merely cosmetic. It’s at the heart of the store’s philosophy and advertising.

“Neiman Marcus launched ‘The Art of Fashion’ campaign back in 1994,” she says, “and it has since become a seasonally anticipated event. The imagery of these advanced collections, combined with its unique styling, show the designers’ creations as ‘wearable art’.”

This year’s campaign is appearing in the September issues of W, Vogue and Vanity Fair. Shot by Norman Jean Roy in the manner of Hollywood studio portraits, the campaign features Drew Barrymore modeling looks by Lanvin, Pucci and Carolina Herrera.

While Sharkey is enthusiastic about Chanel’s fall collection – “it’s reminiscent of the Byzantine empire, embellished and beautifully adorned” – she notes that the intriguing style isn’t exclusively found in those “wow” couture looks. For everyday, work-appropriate outfits, Sharkey prefers mixing and matching staple and up-andcoming designers, moving between Neiman’s fine apparel and better apparel floors.

“Ideally, we may like to dress in Chanel head-to-toe,” Sharkey says, smiling. “But it’s not necessarily reality nor a reflection of how our customers dress in their day-today lives.”

Neiman’s is widening selections in an effort to become the ultimate destination, ever aware that Manhattan’s retail rows are just a train ride away.

“Neiman Marcus has always catered to a customer who appreciates luxury and beautiful fashion. We have recently expanded our merchandise offerings to capture a broader clientele base through lower price points and fabulous luxe finds.”

Heading in a more casual direction, six Neimans recently launched “On the Go,” an active-inspired line that women can wear from gyms to luncheons. The importance of the gentleman customer is also celebrated, with more options going beyond basics into a realm of colored

By Zoë Zellers Photographs by Bob Rozycki

cashmere, artsy prints and suave, updated blazers.

“It” menswear collections include Moncler, Loro Piana, and Ermenegildo Zegna. Neiman has also launched Brunello Cucinelli for men this fall after major success in the women’s department.

“Fall is such a beautiful season at Neiman Marcus,” Sharkey says, “particularly in the Northeast where we have the opportunity to wear and enjoy these distinguishable items such as fur, leather, boots, cashmere and outerwear.”

Customers also can’t miss the Bordeaux-toned trend: “It looks rich and beautiful…. not just in the apparel, but in handbags and shoes. There is a return to lady chic with suiting, pumps and handheld bags, demonstrating a polished look that is both elegant and modern.”

It’s a trend Sharkey envisions will flatter clientele with additions like Celine purses, shoes and ready-to-wear representing “this amazing Parisian feel, very chic, very modern.”

“The Neiman Marcus client is very savvy,” she says.

“She’s sophisticated and aware of trends and designers.

We want to be able to meet her needs. Feedback from our customers is critical for us to better understand how we can improve their experience in the store.”

To that effect, sales associates maintain loyal relationships – an art in itself – even remembering customers’ pieces already hanging in their closets.

“One of the best compliments we receive from a customer is “that my associate really knows me and understands my personal style,’” Sharkey says.

There’s more to satisfying shoppers than creative display design and coveted couture. It’s the teamwork, genuine customer interactions and detail-oriented planning that keep Neiman’s on top. Sharkey’s job has never been a 9 to 5 experience since she filled the post five years ago. And that’s fine with her. Though her retail experience extends more than 25 years, beginning straight out of college, she said, “With Neiman

Beth Sharkey, general manager of Neiman Marcus, sports a Chanel ensemble – jacket ($6,290), black pantolone ($1,430), short bootie ($1,195) and long and short chain necklaces ($1,800; $850). Other jewelry: Jose and Maria Barerra bracelet and bangle ($365, $115); Stephen Dweck earrings (trunk show exclusive).

Marcus, I can honestly say my time and my position has been the most rewarding.”

The Mount Kisco resident’s responsibilities range from hosting in-store events such as Fashion’s Night Out to conversations with designers to private events, sometimes organized by loyal customers.

“I’m inspired by our customers and their charitable affiliations and by the way that they give back.” n

a wild night in store On Sept. 22, Neiman Marcus and General Manager Beth Sharkey will be dancing with wolves, all in support of a good cause – the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem.

The exclusive collaboration with WAG will be an evening of music and fashion, featuring performances by Broadway talent and a runway show with a dozen New York models. Mingling guests will shop for the holidays while munching hors d’oeuvres provided by The Zodiac at Neiman’s and sipping Girard Sauvignon Blanc, courtesy of W. J. Deutsch & Sons. They’ll also have an opportunity to meet ambassador wolf Atka, who will join speakers onstage for the grand finale.

“At Neiman Marcus, we love to host a party, especially when we can tie into a charity, show beautiful fashion and still feel that we’ve been able to help support a cause,” Sharkey says.

“It is part of a long-standing Neiman Marcus tradition and a privilege to give back to the communities

and customers who support us. Many of our charitable initiatives involve local schools, museums, hospitals and nonprofit causes in the Westchester and Greenwich area. Working with the (Wolf Conservation Center) is a new opportunity, and we are looking forward to helping support this worthwhile organization.”

Already measuring runway dimensions and booking models, Sharkey says it’s also an exciting chance to spotlight fashion to a select group.

“The timing is perfect. The kids will be back in school, and fall is approaching. We will showcase all of the beautiful fall trends, offering our guests a variety of looks from daytime to evening.”

Guests will also receive goody bags as souvenirs of a memorable occasion.

Founded in 1999, The Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) is a nonprofit organization that educates the public about this oft-misunderstood species, its relationship to the environment and the human role in protecting the wolf’s future.

“We would like to bring attention to the cause,” Sharkey says, “and what better way than to host a party?”

21

Gregory Crewdson

Joe Girardi

Legends of the fall Ten to watch this season

By Georgette Gouveia “What becomes a legend most?” the Blackglama mink ads asked.

We like to think it’s integrity, creativity, passion, the courage to express yourself and let the chips fall where they may.

In our first-ever “Legends of the Fall” salute, we present 10 individuals who’ll be in the spotlight this season and have been in the spotlight for a long time.

They have the qualities that become a legend most, though like any true legend, we imagine they don’t think of themselves that way.

And one more thing: They live or have been nurtured somewhere in WAG country. Not that we want to get too specific, because, after all, they are your friends and neighbors.

Gregory Crewdson

“Every artist has one story to tell,” Gregory Crewdson once told me, “and he spends his life telling variations on it.”

And what is Crewdson’s story? Primarily, that life is one strange ride. In his new book “Gregory Crewdson: In a Lonely Place” (Harry N. Abrams, $40, 160 pages), he brings together 30 color and 40 duotone photographs from three of his seminal series – “Beneath the Roses,” “Sanctuary” and “Fireflies.” The book is designed to accompany a touring exhibit that began in Stockholm this past spring, wound through Berlin and opens at Det Nationale Fotomuseum in Copenhagen Sept. 22, with a visit to Oslo planned as well.

“Fireflies” is the culmination of two months spent capturing the little sparkplugs as they bubbled up from a sea of grass at dusk each evening. “Sanctuary” records the decaying beauty of old movie sets at Italy’s acclaimed Cinecittà studio.

Filmmaking has always fascinated Crewdson. “Beneath the Roses,” the subject of a 2008 Abrams’ book, is a series of stills for movies that will never be made. Here a car sits with its doors open at an intersection where the light will always be yellow. A boy looks up at a bridge embraced by trees as rays of light stream around him. A nude woman standing before a bathroom mirror is reflected in an empty motel bedroom.

These are vignettes of people and places alone together 22

that have no beginning and no end and yet somehow, seem complete in themselves, at once haunting, Hitchcockian and Hopper-esque in their macabre mundaneness, their disquieting solitude.

Visitors to the Berkshires will recognize the industrial towns and rolling hills in “Roses” as many of its photographs were shot in Adams, North Adams and Pittsfield, Mass. But the seed for Crewdson’s “story” was nurtured during his student days at Purchase College, where as a runner loping through the leafy, winding lanes of the community, past vast estates, he first became aware of what he described as the mystery of suburbia.

But the seed for Crewdson’s “story” was nurtured during his student days at Purchase College, where as a runner loping through the leafy, winding lanes of the community, past vast estates, he first became aware of what he described as the mystery of suburbia.

He’s still in school, so to speak – the Yale University School of Art, where he teaches, though he makes his home in New York City.

But it’s fair to say that WAG country helped set him on that circular path where he “comes back again and again to the American Dream and its dark inverse.”

Joe Girardi

They say catchers always make good managers. It must have something to do with calling the game from behind the plate. Certainly that would seem to be the case with former New York Yankees catcher Joe Girardi, who was part of the team’s glory days in the late ’90s as a player and led the Bombers to their 27th World Series title in 2009, his sophomore year as manager.

Can the Yanks add a 28th this year? The odds would seem against them with standout Red Sox and Phillies teams in their way and the proverbial host of Yankee mini-

dramas thrown into the mix.

The pressure would be crushing on less hardy souls. But this is after all, the man who stopped on his way home to Westchester after winning his first World Series as a Yankee manager to help a motorist who had crashed into a wall on the Cross County Parkway. Can you spell “compassion?”

It’s a quality Girardi might’ve honed, along with his batting skills and his ability to handle pitchers, in a 15-year playing career with the Yanks, the Colorado Rockies, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs in his native Illinois, where he attended Catholic school, played football and baseball and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering from Northwestern University.

After retiring from the Bombers in 2004, he engineered his way into the broadcast booth, serving as a commentator for the YES Network and working Games 3-5 of the 2006 World Series for Fox. But managing appears to be his destiny. As manager of the Florida Marlins in 2006, he banned facial hair (a holdover from Yankee sartorial policy) and more important, guided the team to wild-card contention despite having the lowest payroll in Major League Baseball. He was canned for getting into an argument with owner Jeffrey Loria over Loria’s heckling of umpire Larry Vanover. Still Girardi came up aces, winning the National League Manager of the Year Award and The Sporting News Manager of the Year Award for the National League that year.

Girardi’s going to need a little luck to be a winner this year. But he’s clearly a man who believes in making his own.

After all, he wore number 27 on his jersey until the Yanks won their 27th pennant. Now he sports number 28.

But you know he’s just itching to change that to 29.

Ron Howard

“Nice guys finish last,” Vince Lombardi said. But then, he didn’t know Ron Howard.

Yet surely he must’ve been aware of the boy turned man who has in a sense always been America’s son. Make that America’s fortunate son: The Oscar-winning director, a longtime member of the Jacob Burns Film Center and Media Arts Lab in Pleasantville, was recently elected to the center’s board and serves as co-chairman of its Sept. 17 “Tribute to Steven Spielberg.”

We first encountered Howard as Andy Griffith’s Norman Rockwellian child in the sly, wry “Andy Griffith Show” – the CBS program that forever changed the way we view small Southern towns, fishing with your dad and whistling theme songs. Meanwhile, he lithped his way through “Gary, Indiana” as Shirley Jones’ painfully shy baby bro in “The Music Man.” Then he grew up before our eyes as foursquare ’50s teen Richie Cunningham on ABC’s “Happy Days,” happy to play the straight man and take a backseat to Henry Winkler’s Fonz and a number of other zanies.

A less gracious individual might’ve been miffed. But Howard has always been an embodiment of grace, a quality that has served him well as he transitioned into directing, where his true Hollywood gifts lie.

Not surprisingly, he’s had his hand on the till of some of Hollywood’s most Capra-esque films, where the characters’ basic decency and determination shine through, no matter the obstacles or otherworldly scenarios. Who hasn’t plunged into “Splash,” in which a mermaid (Darryl Hannah) finds her land legs or savored the chess match that is “Frost/Nixon,” in which a callow David Frost (Michael Sheen) finds his true voice? Who hasn’t taken courage from “Apollo 13” or marveled at “A Beautiful Mind,” his Oscarwinning turn, in which Howard visualizes the creativity and madness of the gifted, troubled John Nash (Russell Crowe)?

But Howard doesn’t just want to tell good stories on film. The Fairfield County resident wants students to appreciate cinematic storytelling as well. Hence his involvement with the Jacob Burns Center.

“I believe in the guiding principles behind both their education and film programs, and I want to help explore new partnerships that broaden their reach.”

Ani Kavafian

Longevity has its rewards: This season will mark violinist Ani Kavafian’s 33rd with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. This fall will find her on tour with the society to Drew University in Madison, N.J., Wigmore Hall in London, Hamburg, Germany, and Aarhus, Denmark.

In North America and Europe, she performs with the Kavafian/Schub/Shifrin Trio, the Da Salo String Trio, the Triton Horn Trio and her sister, Ida, who is also a violinist as was their late mother, whom Ani Kavafian cites as the greatest influence on her life.

The Westchester resident – who was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents and raised in Detroit – is also concertmaster and a frequent soloist with the New Haven Symphony, where she has been cycling through Mozart’s concertos, and is a full professor at Yale University. She took part in the 50th anniversary performance of the Young Concert Artist Alumni Association, which she serves as president, and is artistic director of the Mostly Music chamber series in New Jersey. Her trusty companion in these endeavors is a 1726 Stradivarius.

The peripatetic life of the world-class musician would seem to be one of a series of endless rehearsals, concerts and hotel rooms. But as her Chamber Music Society artist profile makes clear, Kafavian has carved out a life for herself with hubby Bernard Mindich, the multimedia artist, in New York City. They haunt galleries in Chelsea, although Kafavian, a cook and cooking show aficionado, also likes the meat-packing district and walks on the Highline. Among the books she’s plunged into are “Cutting For Stone,” Abraham Verghese’s saga of twin brothers buffeted by fate, set against the backdrop of Ethiopia and New York, and Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help,” about a young writer who stirs up a hornets’ nest of trouble when she delves into

Ron Howard

Ani Kavafian

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the lives of the African-American women who work for her neighbors. (It’s now also a feature film.)

Though it may come as a surprise to many buffs, classical musicians generally don’t listen to classical music in their downtime. While Kafavian rounds up the usual suspects in naming her favorite composers – Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms – in her spare listening time she favors old radio series, ’40s standards and Barbara Streisand.

As she says in her CMS interview: “I find that classical music is like listening to work.”

Branford Marsalis

They are the first family of jazz – patriarch/pianist/educator Ellis and offspring Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason, with their singular gifts and accomplishments. This season, saxophonist Branford shines a light in our area as he performs the Glazunov Concerto for Saxophone with the Westchester Philharmonic at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait until May 19 and 20 to hear it. Still, it will no doubt be well worth the wait. This piece for alto sax in E-flat major was written in 1934 when the sax was already about 90 years old but still something of a novelty in the symphonic world.

Pestered by German saxophonist Sigurd Raschèr for a new work, Alexander Glazunov took up the challenge, delivering a piece filled with romantic yearning that also contains the kind of rhythmic fluidity often associated with the jazz idiom.

Branford Marsalis would seem to be admirably suited to it, seamlessly bridging as he does the worlds of jazz, blues, funk and classical music with an accessible virtuosity. But whereas Wynton has given up classical music to devote himself full time to jazz, Branford Marsalis has increasingly made a home for himself on the classical stage, performing not only Glazunov but Copland, Debussy, Ibert, Mahler, Milhaud, Rorem and Vaughn Williams with the Chicago, Detroit, Düsseldorf and North Carolina Symphonies and the Boston Pops. (In other ways, the two most famous Marsalis siblings also strike us as complements: Wynton, for all his Jazz at Lincoln Center, is more laidback New Orleans; Branford, more button-down Westchester.)

Nevertheless, Branford Marsalis’ roots are in the family’s native New Orleans and in jazz. He first garnered attention in the early 1980s with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Wynton’s quintet before creating his own group. He has performed with such jazz greats as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins.

Branford Marsalis has toured with Sting and was the 24

Branford Marsalis.

Photograph by Palma Kolansky

leader of the “The Tonight Show” band.

In 2002, the three-time Grammy Award winner founded Marsalis Music, to produce his own music as well as that of up-and-coming jazz artists.

Peter Martins

It is, as Yogi Berra would say, a case of déjà vu all over again – a cool, authoritative blond taking on one of ballet’s most iconic roles in George Balanchine’s “Apollo.” The blond in question is our cover guy Chase Finlay. But flash back 44 years to the Edinburgh Festival when Balanchine

As the company’s ballet master in chief and key choreographer, Martins has gracefully walked the fine line between being the custodian of Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’ ballets and a catalyst for new works. entrusted the role to another big, beautiful blond, Royal Danish Ballet principal Peter Martins. It was not only the beginning of a new chapter in the career of one of the 20th century’s greatest dancers but the foreshadowing of a new era at the New York City Ballet as Martins eventually became “Mr. B’s” heir apparent and then successor.

As the company’s ballet master in chief and key choreographer, Martins has gracefully walked the fine line between being the custodian of Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’ ballets and a catalyst for new works. The City Ballet’s Sept. 22 gala is a perfect example. It features Balanchine’s salute to Britannia, “Union Jack,” as well as the premiere of “Ocean’s Kingdom,” which Martins has choreographed to Paul McCartney’s first-ever ballet score. “Ocean’s Kingdom” is something of a family affair. Fashion designer Stella McCartney has created the costumes.

Perhaps the only thing that would make this hot ticket even more enticing would be if Martins were still dancing.

Though in his autobiography, “Far From Denmark” (Little, Brown and Company, 1982), Martins is candid about his early struggles to adapt to Balanchine’s idiosyncratic style – which relies on the tricky combination of speed and amplitude and an inversion of the traditional classical ballet vocabulary – it would be hard today to imagine

Scott Pelley

him outside the front rank of all-time City Ballet danseurs that includes Jacques d’Amboise and Edward Villella. The turning point was, I think, the triumphant 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Paired with the petite, dark, intense Kay Mazzo in Balanchine’s moving “Duo Concertant” and witty “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” Martins demonstrated that he could move beyond playing the god or the prince and still be noble, even divine.

Indeed, when Balanchine muse Suzanne Farrell returned to the company three years later and was once again partnered by Martins, who had a reputation for making every ballerina look even better, they were dubbed “Mr. and Ms. God” in the popular press.

Absorbing Balanchine like a sponge, he moved on to choreography with the electric “Calcium Night Light” (1977) and tried his hand at Broadway, collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber on “Song & Dance” in 1985.

Among his more than 80 ballets are full-length stagings of “Romeo & Juliet,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake” – this in a company whose adage, as per Balanchine, was “There are no mothers-in-law in ballet.”

The Westchester resident has also found time to champion other choreographers through the Diamond Project and the New York Choreographic Institute.

In 1983, Martins was made a Knight of The First Order of Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, an acknowledgement of one of the greatest Danes this side of Hamlet.

Scott Pelley

Talk about a hot seat: On June 6, Scott Pelley took over from Katie Couric as anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,’’ a post that is among the most venerable in broadcast journalism (see Walter Cronkite’s tenure) but not without its controversy (see the careers of Dan Rather, Connie Chung and Couric herself).

If anyone is up to the challenge, it is Pelley, the veteran “60 Minutes” reporter and Fairfield resident. He has covered the Japanese tsunami, the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Monica-gate and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. His consummately professional reporting is so acclaimed that since he arrived at “60 Minutes” in 2004, half of all the major awards won by the venerable broadcast have been for his stories.

Those stories may find him treading the corridors of power, as he has done for interviews with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. But they also take him to the unher-

Dana Tyler

Stuart Weitzman

alded and the dispossessed, as for his piece on homeless schoolchildren in Florida. It yielded an unprecedented response, including a pledge of $5.6 million from a local church group.

Pelley cut his journalistic teeth in his native Texas where he was a copyboy for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal before becoming a producer/reporter for KSEL-TV in Lubbock and KXAS-TV and WFAA-TV, both in Dallas/Fort Worth.

After a stint at CBS News in Dallas, he became a reporter for the Eye Network in New York in 1989 and ultimately White House correspondent before joining “60 Minutes.”

As anchor of the “CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley,” he’ll continue filing stories for “60 Minutes.” It’s a tall Texas order. But if anyone can do it, the man from San Antonio can.

Raymond,” introducing a news story in which Ray’s hapless big bro Robert had been gored by a bull?

Nothing becomes a goddess quite like a sense of humor.

And that’s no bull.

Dana Tyler

The only time I ever met Dana Tyler was at a press luncheon at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. When I was introduced to her, she smiled and said, “I love your suit” – this from a woman who is no slouch in either the beauty or the fashion departments. But then, in her 20 years as an integral part of the CBS 2 news team – she now co-anchors CBS 2 News at 6 p.m. – Tyler has always been a gracious presence.

She gets a particularly shout out here from arts lovers for the way she has swum against the tide, doing regular pieces on Met exhibits and Broadway shows at a time when the arts get scant local coverage and little national TV exposure unless someone is murdered at The Metropolitan Opera or a Picasso is purloined.

Though she’s made her career in broadcast, Tyler has newsprint in her blood. Her great-grandfather Ralph Waldo Tyler was a newspaper reporter and editor in Columbus, Ohio, and the first accredited African-American correspondent to report on African-American soldiers overseas in World War I. Dana Tyler got her start in Columbus as well, with WCOL Radio and WBNS-TV, where she won an Emmy Award for her “Heart of Ohio” broadcasts. In 1990, she and the late, lamented Reggie Harris became the first African-American anchor team in New York City. Among her numerous Emmys here are awards for anchoring coverage of Flight 1549’s miracle landing in the Hudson River and her reporting in the health special “Race for the Cure.”

Yet for all her accomplishments, the Fairfield County resident is not afraid to poke fun at her polished image. Remember the time she played herself on “Everybody Loves

Stuart Weitzman

When I think of Stuart Weitzman, I don’t think of him at all but rather of a pair of platform, peep-toe pumps with a ribbon flourish in indigo, purple, royal blue and fuchsia – the colors of the night, the sea, hot jazz and my moods.

Most of all, I think about how they make my 8 ½ D toot-

And to think this was a guy who was headed to Wall Street after graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

(Stuart, what were you thinking? Bull markets come and go. Shoes in a lady’s closet are eternal.) sies – hey, we’re not talking Cinderella, here – look kind of slim.

Which is precisely what Weitzman would want. After all, he’s a “shoe engineer,” marrying style and comfort for the likes of Angelina Jolie, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Alba, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Swift – the list of properly shod goddesses goes on. (Remember when he used to design a pair of one-of-a-kind jeweled shoes for a rising starlet to wear on Oscar’s red carpet? The unveiling of the shoes and the wearer was almost as exciting as a Johnny Depp sighting.)

How do we love Stuart Weitzman shoes? Let us count the ways – more than 600 aesthetic styles in unusual footwear materials ranging from cork to Gortex to jelly to ultra suede; 50 sizes, from four to 12 and a whopping four widths; 70 countries; 77 retail stores; approximately 2 million pairs sold annually.

And to think this was a guy who was headed to Wall Street after graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. (Stuart, what were you thinking? Bull markets come and go. Shoes in a lady’s closet are eternal.)

When Weitzman’s father died unexpectedly, however, he took over his footwear company, Mr. Seymour. The

Brian Williams

company underwent several transformations, with Stuart Weitzman remaining president of Mr. Seymour, which became Stuart Weitzman Inc. In 2005, that company teamed with Irving Place Capital, becoming Stuart Weitzman Holdings, setting itself up for a major international retail expansion. Last year, Stuart Weitzman Holdings sold a majority stake of the company to The Jones Group Inc. All of which should’ve made Weitzman very happy. And why not? This Fairfield County resident is a foot fetishist in the nicest possible way.

Brian Williams

He has been dubbed “the Walter Cronkite of the 21st century.” But we’d like to go media smarty-pants one better: He’s really the Jimmy Stewart of the media.

There’s just something about the way he drawls out the first syllable in “Washington” (more like “Warshington”), the handsomeness that never threatens or imposes, but especially, the decency he brings to witnessing some of the world’s great tragedies.

Williams, who became anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News” on Dec. 2, 2004, made his rep almost immediately in his hands-on coverage of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. In those, he showed that he could be personal without being smarmy, professional without being remote.

It’s the same balance he’ll have to strike as NBC gets ready to broadcast the 2012 Summer Olympics from riot-plagued London. Already the hype and the anxiety have begun, with some of the story lines set, particularly at the pool, where the gorgeous Ryan Lochte will no doubt attempt to top BFF Michael Phelps by racing for nine golds. Though Williams will leave the heavy broadcast lifting there to Bob Costas and the “Today” show crew, whose members will not leave any crumpet or royal relative unturned, you know he’ll have some wry commentary.

His sense of humor spurred Entertainment Weekly magazine to say that his name should be placed alongside that of “Saturday Night Live” greats after his hosting gig there. It’s an accolade that has to compete with his George Foster Peabody Award, the industry’s highest honor, and numerous Edward R. Murrow and Emmy awards.

Despite that hardware, the Fairfield County resident remains a small-town guy, who spent many years as a volunteer firefighter in his native Middletown, N.J., went to Catholic U. and serves on the Board of Directors of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation.

No doubt Jimmy Stewart would’ve heartily approved. n 25

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich showcases fine and decorative arts, natural science and anthropology, while also offering festivals and educational programming. On display, “Seated Model and Sculptor Studying Sculptured Head,” a circa-1933 etching by Pablo Picasso. (c) 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York.

Art quest Hit the trail to explore Connecticut’s riches

E

veryone’s heard of people who make road trips with a particular theme.

There are those on a quest to visit majorleague ballparks or ride the fastest roller coasters, while others might set out to find the quirkiest of roadside attractions or sample the best of a region’s cuisine.

So how about a journey devoted to art? Unusual, perhaps, but as the Connecticut Art Trail deftly demonstrates, it’s a trip well worth taking.

The trail is a partnership among 15 museums and historic sites, a collective that comes complete with brochure, website, special admission ticket and even a free app — all adding up to a fitting introduction to the artistic treasures to be found throughout the state.

And the beauty of the trail is it’s self-guided. It’s up to you whether you spend a quiet morning poking around a single museum or fill a weekend getaway with festivals, programs and exhibitions at a variety of the destinations.

If there’s a theme, it’s diversity. The trail might find you at the site of a famed art colony, standing on the same porch where now-legendary artists rested after a day at their easels. Another stop could have you taking a workshop to learn the latest advances in printmaking, while still another would allow you to explore the natural history of the land and waterways that have provided centuries of artistic inspiration.

The trail traces its roots back to 1995, when the Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail was launched as a celebration of 10 destinations that had ties to American Impressionism, a later, more muscular version of its French cousin.

After all, the late 19th and early-20th centuries found artists flocking to the state, drawn by its rivers and shorelines, country vistas and rural villages that would all become subjects for works that helped define a new American art movement.

Artists whose names are now well known — from J.

26

By Mary Shustack Alden Weir to Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman to Elmer Livingston MacRae — would paint or draw, often en plein air, on their own retreats from the city, as guests of fellow artists or while staying at boarding houses such as the Holley House in Cos Cob or another in Old Lyme, run by Florence Griswold. Artist colonies sprang up out of these hotbeds of creativity.

Today, these places, preserved as destinations such as the Weir Farm National Historic Site, the Bush-Holley Historic Site and the Florence Griswold Museum, not only give a glimpse into those storied days but also offer exhibitions and programming that bring the collections and missions vividly alive to contemporary audiences.

“The art trail definitely brings people in,” said Julyen Norman, executive director of the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk The trail, which expanded from its original configuration in both scope and membership (growing to 15 sites by 2008), is organized by region, though the art-trail website also allows for customized searches on topics ranging from American Impressionism to Asian art, historic buildings and furnishings to anthropology.

There is a depth that both awes — and invites exploration.

I sampled the trail by creating my own whirlwind minitour, popping into the four Fairfield County destinations – as designated by the Art Trail – over three recent days.

Here’s a bit of the travelogue. May it whet your appetite to plan your own trek along the Connecticut Art Trail.

The Bruce Museum

I arrived at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich ready to be dazzled by some very real gems. “Bijoux: The Origins and Impact of Jewelry,” which continues into next March, did not disappoint. I drooled over diamonds and sapphires, cameos and moonstones but also paused to consider adornments fashioned out of lava, flax paper and recycled water bottles.

But those stunning treasures didn’t keep me from appreciating the scope of the museum, where Picasso etchings will continue to fill an arcade gallery through mid-October and Rembrandt drawings arrive later this month. Current gallery space also boasts works ranging from Tang Dynasty sculptures to 1980s photographs.

Unexpected was the depth of the section devoted to cultivating an ecological awareness and local perspective on the natural world. Live crabs are featured in a display about the Long Island Sound, while the youngest of visitors delight in a reconstructed wigwam.

As Cynthia Ehlinger, public relations/curatorial assistant, shared, the Bruce’s strength lies in its focus on quality: “We’re not so big that it’s overwhelming.”

A juried outdoor arts festival — the 30th annual, planned for Oct. 8-9 — will put the spotlight on contemporary creations by some 80 artists. And no visit to the Bruce is complete without a stop in its expansive gift shop, a treasure trove of artistic finds.

The Bush-Holley Historic Site

Amble up the steps of the Bush-Holley House and onto the porch. Turn to look out over adjacent waterways and imagine the time before I-95 towered overhead and modern boats filled the water. That’s what drew so many artists to this Cos Cob harborside retreat that now also houses the Greenwich Historical Society. The grounds include an archives center, program and event space and abundant gardens.

Visitors here find a dual interpretation of the property, with a glimpse into the “New Nation”-era of the Bush family, prosperous merchants who lived here from 1790 to 1825, right alongside a journey back to the Cos Cob art colony that thrived from 1890 to 1920. The state’s first Impressionist art colony grew out of Holley House, a boarding house that became a magnet for artists. A tour of this national historic landmark, with incredibly knowledgeable docent Lorraine Hufnagel reveals artistry

The upstairs room of the back kitchen wing of the BushHolley House. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society.

The Bush-Holley House

at every turn, from the paintings of frequent guest Childe Hassam to the Volkmar pottery to the re-creation of artist (and later house owner) Elmer MacRae’s bedroom/studio, complete with art supplies at the ready.

“Little by little, it became known that ‘art’ was happening at the Holley House,” Hufnagel said.

Indeed, added Barbara Bishop, marketing and communications manager for the historical society, this breezy escape from New York City became an “intellectual hub”

for writers, journalists and artists. “The Holleys, who owned this house, really nurtured the spirit here.”

And it’s still palpable.

Center for Contemporary Printmaking

Even a casual visitor can tell they take things seriously at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, which bills itself as “the only nonprofit organization between New

York City and Boston solely dedicated to the art of the print.”

“It is rare to have a space that is both workshop and gallery,” said Julyen Norman, the center’s executive director.

“It’s also unusual to specialize in contemporary prints.”

But the historic space, within Mathews Park in Norwalk, does just that, clearly demonstrated by the 8th Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition that recently focused on works from artists around the globe.

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The Center for Contemporary Printmaking

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Photograph by Peter Arron/Esto.

Associate printmaker Christopher Shore at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking.

The center is light, airy and full of activity as artists discuss works-in-progress. Walls are dotted with finished works, including limited-edition creations. Plans are under way for future events. The center focuses on intaglio, lithography, monotype, silkscreen, woodblock printing, paper works, book arts and digital arts. Not sure what they all are? There’s probably a workshop to learn about them.

The space serves both professionals — many artists rent time to use the facilities or work with the staff, including master printer and artistic director Anthony Kirk — and amateurs who might simply want to take a workshop on silkscreening. Throughout, the center celebrates tradition but keeps up with latest technology and trends.

“We’re using vegetable-based dyes that didn’t exist during Rembrandt’s day,” said Norman with a wry smile.

The space also explores digital advances, but it’s not the focus. “We’ll never go just fully digital,” he added, saying it’s not “who we are.”

This autumn will witness the annual “Monothon,” a monotype marathon that begins next month and culminates in an auction and party Nov. 19.

“It’s a great time to visit us,” said Norman. “Every corner is buzzing.”

Weir Farm National Historic Site

It’s doubtful J. Alden Weir ever imagined his rural retreat would one day become a National Park Service site, one that preserves not only his home, studios, barn and 28

Weir Farm

gardens but the landscape that so inspired the artist and friends, including Hassam, Twachtman, Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Singer Sargent. Tucked deep along winding roads straddling Wilton and Ridgefield, Weir’s property today is a site that carries a sense of importance.

Begin the immersion with an informative video in the visitor center, which traces Weir’s life as he moved from Realist painter to Impressionist icon. Weir, a classically trained artist initially appalled by French Impressionism, would see his thoughts change – and his work follow suit – as he became entrenched in the American Impressionist community toward the end of the 19th century.

Then, take the half-hour tour (as I did) to hear of the site as it passed from Weir to his artist daughter Dorothy and her husband, sculptor Mahonri Young, and then to local artists Sperry and Doris Andrews, whose preservation wishes led to the property becoming part of the national-park system. With the Weir house and surrounding studios under renovation, this outdoor tour came to life thanks to ranger Allison Jordan, her lively talk and her trusty laminated cards. It’s one thing to see a painting of an orchard. It’s another completely to look out on the very scene that captivated Weir so long ago.

A key component of the site is the Weir Farm Art Center, which offers educational programs, publications and administers an artist-in-residence program. (I met New York City-based, multimedia artist Josh Dorman who was working on animation, painting and drawing, seemingly all at once). And make sure to “Take Part in Art.”

Each day, art supplies are laid out for visitors to use, free of charge. As Jordan said, “Even if they just try it, give it a whirl, they’re forever a part of that artistic tradition.”

I admit past attempts at drawing left me feeling intimidated, but as I now think back on those rolling meadows, meandering stone walls and evocative buildings, I know next time I’ll dive right into those pastels.

On the rest of the Trail

Expand your itinerary to include the Trail’s Litchfield Hills destinations, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield and the Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center in Waterbury. Venture further afield, to Greater New Haven, to explore the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. Mystic Country is home to the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut in Mansfield/Storrs; the Slater Memorial Museum on the Norwich Free Academy campus in Norwich; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London; and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. The River Valley destinations round out the offerings with the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington; the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford.

Visit arttrail.org for further details on the Connecticut Art Trail, including information and links to each member museum and historic site as well as the free iPhone app. There are also details about the trail’s ArtPass, which offers admission to all 15 member sites for $25. n

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Aaron Copland at the desk in his home studio in Cortlandt Manor.

A ‘note’ worthy life Aaron Copland’s legacy lives on through the Copland House in Cortlandt Manor

By Mary Shustack Up a twisting and secluded driveway, the contemporary house slowly comes into view.

Nestled into its surroundings, it’s a modern escape within the woods of northern Westchester.

No wonder Aaron Copland – considered the dean of American composers – spent the last 30 years of his life calling this Cortlandt Manor property home.

And today, long after Copland’s 1990 death, the composer’s legacy is being kept alive through performances and educational programs, a signature ensemble and prestigious artist residencies.

It’s all the work of Copland House, an arts organization headquartered at the former Copland home that bills itself as a “place where America’s musical past and future meet.”

And that sense of moving forward is the key, said Michael Boriskin, the Copland House artistic and executive director who is also a pianist with its Music from Copland House ensemble.

“There’s no question about it,” Boriskin said. “Copland was all about ‘teaching.’ He never had a fixed university position, but he certainly taught. … He was all about reaching out to people.”

And Copland, a Brooklyn boy-turned-international musical icon, might just blush at what Copland House is continuing in his name.

“He was a singularly modest and unassuming individual, yet he really changed the face of American music,” Boriskin said. “He helped define that sensibility and 30

sound and spirit of American music.”

In fact, Copland, whose famed works include “Appalachian Spring,” “El Salon Mexico” and “Fanfare for the Common Man,” was so beloved among the local community that a grassroots effort went into high gear following his death. The property, known as Rock Hill, was saved and by 1998, Copland House was operating as a creative center that hasn’t looked back.

“This all remains such great fun for us, to build an institution from scratch, and it’s the kind of entity that doesn’t really exist anywhere in the country,” Boriskin said. “What a thrill it is, for all of us, that it happens to be here, in our own backyard.”

At home, with history

And it’s Copland’s former backyard that sets the tone for the work of the Copland House.

“You can imagine it, even now,” Boriskin said. “You’re so isolated, even though you’re five minutes off the highway… (Copland) called this place ‘My solitude. My hideaway’ and that’s a direct quote.”

Back then – before decades of growth of the property’s trees – Copland had his own view of the Hudson River.

“When he was here he used to be able to sit on this terrace and see the boats go by,” Boriskin said.

The home, a ranch-style built in the 1940s, was the composer’s base from 1960 to his death. Today, it’s a national historic landmark, the only one directly associated with a concert-music figure.

Copland House honors the past but is looking decidedly forward.

“From the outset, it was never intended as a shrine,” Boriskin said, but rather a “working tribute.”

“The house is really very reflective of his personality and his values,” Boriskin said. “There really is a kind of rugged elegance.”

The glass-walled studio, an airy space complete with a grand piano and Copland’s original desk, is the home’s showpiece.

“The room is pretty much as it was when he was here,” he said. The house, though not a museum, includes a wealth of Copland possessions and memorabilia. There’s even a rejection letter Copland once received from a competition.

“We keep that right next to the desk, kind of as inspiration for composers,” Boriskin said.

In residence

In addition to serving as the business headquarters, hosting educational programs and offering tours, the Copland House itself is primarily used as the home for a composer’s residence program.

Winners of the Aaron Copland Award, emerging or mid-career American composers chosen based on artistic merit, stay at Copland House for anywhere from three weeks to two months.

“We think this has quite a coveted reputation in the field,” Boriskin said. The program, he added, has hosted more than 100 residents since it began in 1998.

Copland House in Cortlandt Manor.

One of the latest was James Romig, a composer from Illinois who spent three weeks at Copland House this summer, along with his wife, pianist Ashlee Mack.

“I’ve known about it for ages,” Romig said. “Everyone knows about Copland House.”

Romig, who teaches at Western Illinois University, was one of the artists – selected by an outside review panel (“We wanted it to be an impartial process,” Boriskin said.) – for the prestigious residency.

The entire Copland House experience, Romig said, adds to his work.

“It’s a setting,” he said. “The surrounding contributes as much as the house does.”

And he acknowledges he’d spent some of his time reading Copland’s letters in the books there and playing his music, featured on hundreds of CDs.

Michael Boriskin, Copland House artistic and executive director.

“Of course, there’s Copland that I haven’t heard, later works… it’s fun to delve into those, too,” he added.

Romig, who’s had residencies in the past, said the key is not showing up with nothing and expecting inspiration.

To that end, he had specific work in mind for his time at Copland House, some work he’s already spent several months on.

“Now it’s time to turn it from sketches to real music.”

And having so much of Copland around only helps.

“There are certain things that give you a creative boost,” he said.

Boriskin added that having composers in residence echoes the spirit of Copland.

“I’ve always been fascinated with the notion of starting with a blank canvas in front of you,” he said. “I’ve always been in awe of these wonderful artists who can

make something that wasn’t there before. We’re building something that didn’t exist either.”

A new stage

While Copland House offerings have always been presented at a number of off-site venues both locally and around the country, there was a major development a few years ago.

It was announced back in 2009 that Copland House would expand its programming through an innovative partnership with Westchester County, creating an arts center at the historic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco.

The Georgian Revival mansion was built in 1906-07 as the country home of William Sloane, president of the W & J Sloane Furniture Company. The property was

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really not so pleasant to listen to,” he said. “It just turned a lot of people off. It just gave newer music a bad reputation.”

Copland House programming, he said, is very different.

“I can’t answer for it, but I can offer a little bit of a corrective for it,” he said. “(Audiences) just have to give us, in the music world, a second chance at getting them back. There are terrific composers around, and we try to identify and champion as many as we can.”

Even though Copland House programs are about creating “a real sense of fun,” Boriskin added that “never precluded doing serious work.”

The composer is on hand often, with questions invited.

“People love to explore process, even if they know very little about it.”

And the composer, another echo of the Copland legacy, is in the spotlight.

“We are trying to bring the composer back to the center of the creative table, if you will,” Boriskin said. “We give our audience the opportunity of direct contact.”

And it’s been working.

“We find we can maybe even do more challenging work, because everybody’s loose. Everybody’s open to it,” he said. “Sorry about the pun, but we seem to have really struck a chord.”

Ticket prices, he added, are kept reasonable, especially for Friends of Copland House.

“We wanted to make the statement also through the ticket price,” he said. “You’ll feel better about not liking it if you didn’t pay $160 for a ticket.”

Copland in town

Composer residencies, musical performances and educational programs are offered at The Copland House at Merestead in Mount Kisco. Here, its main house and formal gardens.

bequeathed to the county in 1982 by Sloane’s daughter, Margaret Sloane Patterson, and her husband, Dr. Robert L. Patterson Jr., and came to the county as a park, following the death of Mrs. Patterson in 2000.

Today, the stately mansion and gardens set on 130 acres host Copland House residencies and programs.

Copland House at Merestead, its season now under way, holds concerts in the property’s barn, music room or in the gardens.

Merestead, he said, gives the programmers the chance to “break out of those four walls of the traditional concert hall.”

It’s also a place where artists can work together, creating a collaborative community in contrast to the singular residencies at Copland House proper.

“It has already given us a real public platform for us to share our work,” Boriskin said of the offerings at Merestead. “We can talk about music, American or otherwise, all you want, but until you hear it, it’s just talk.”

Challenges, rewards

Introducing audiences to contemporary music, or music that’s just not familiar to them, is indeed a challenge.

32

“People have so many choices,” Boriskin said, so programs are often themed.

Local shows coming up include “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” Sept. 17; “A Chinese Harvest Moon Celebration” Oct. 30; and “Murder, Mayhem and the Mall” Dec. 4. (See story on the new season.)

By now, Boriskin thinks the Copland House name carries some weight.

“We try to select works very wisely, because we understand programming an entire series of music most people don’t know requires building a real bond of trust between us and the audience.”

Through Copland House programming, Boriskin added, he hopes people experience “a real sense of adventure and discovery.”

“So many people have said to me, ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at a concert, what I’m supposed to wear, when I’m supposed to clap,’” Boriskin said.

He understands their hesitation, and the way people may have been turned off by the perceived exclusivity of highbrow classical concerts – or contemporary work that was too avant-garde for understanding.

“So much of it – we have to be frank about it – was

Boriskin said the Copland House is part of the community, as was Copland.

“He was a presence here but always a very quiet presence,” Boriskin said.

He would be spotted in town or open his home to school groups or for interviews.

“There are legions of stories about his personal accessibility,” Boriskin said. “The place, I gathered, while he was here was a really beehive of activity.”

And today, that is the way Copland House proceeds, working with local entities from Caramoor to the Jacob Burns Film Center, from the Neuberger Museum of Art to the Paramount Center for the Arts and from the Westchester Library System to Sarah Lawrence College.

“From the start, we’ve regarded it as very important to be a very good cultural partner and a very good cultural neighbor.”

Working with school groups and students, Boriskin added, has been of prime importance, especially these days when arts funding is being slashed.

“It’s never a frill,” he said. “Creativity needs to be the core of our educational system.”

And that, too, is part of Copland’s legacy, one that Boriskin taps into time and time again.

“We’re thrilled to have that,” Boriskin said. “We feel an enormous responsibility but it’s also an enormously inspiring and electrifying for us to be creating this in the name of an exceptionally modest individual whose modesty didn’t prevent him from creating an American musical idiom.”

And just as Copland thrived well into his later years, the works of Copland House are going to continue.

“We’re here to stay,” Boriskin said. “We’re just at the beginning. … We’ve got ideas for the next 20 years, without breaking a sweat.”

For more information, including details on concerts and membership, visit coplandhouse.org. n

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Lost in translation Staging a play about miscommunication

F

or success when buying real estate, the pros say it’s all about “location, location, location.”

To get to Carnegie Hall, you’ve got to “practice, practice, practice.”

When it comes to making a hit on Broadway, the slogan may well be “collaboration, collaboration, collaboration.”

And, of course, a lot of luck.

Believing that good luck is critical in all aspects of life is a tenet of Chinese thinking, so for the opening of a new Broadway comedy about an American doing business in China, the producers chose Oct. 11 – a “good day to start a business,” according to the Chinese Almanac.

“But really, success begins with the writer and director,” says Dasha Epstein, one of the producers of “Chinglish,” written by David Henry Hwang, who was only 30 when he won a Tony award for “M. Butterfly.”

We’re in Ruby Foo’s, a popular Times Square restaurant that uses Asian decor generously – deep red curtains, hanging tasseled lanterns and Buddha statuettes – with the food designed primarily for American culinary tastes. It’s a fitting place to talk about a play that delves into the intricacies of ChineseAmerican communication – and miscommunication – and reveals how challenging it is to understand another culture, especially when interpretation depends on far more than basic translation of vocabulary.

“This production is so incredibly timely when you look at the growth of China and our increasing interaction with the Chinese on a business and personal level,” Epstein says. “And there is so much going on in the play –romance, comedy, drama – a lot of food for thought.”

We are joined by Hwang and Leigh Silverman, the play’s director, at a thickly lacquered wood table set with forks and chopsticks, and discuss how “Chinglish” began its journey to Broadway after opening in Chicago with sensational reviews and delighted audience responses.

Hwang feels it is critical that the writer and director “share a vision about the play. Leigh and I have that.”

Silverman nods in assent. “And we share a vigorous work ethic,” she says.

“It would be a problem if one of us liked to slack off.”

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Story and Photographs by Dana Ramos

Leigh Silverman, David Henry Hwang and Dasha Epstein at Ruby Foo’s on Broadway. Below, an example of a “Chinglish” sign in China.

It isn’t necessary for the collaborators to like each other on a personal level.

But it certainly makes work more pleasant when – as in the case of Hwang and Silverman – they genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

“We’re also neighbors in Brooklyn,” Silverman says, although that wasn’t by design. It came about as a matter of practicality. Hwang has raised a family there for several years and Silverman is a more recent transplant. The two friends also feel fortunate that they enjoy working with experienced producers who are excited about the production and just as committed as they are.

In discussing the collaborative pro-

cess, they point out that there are hundreds of ways a production can come to fruition – or not – and “Chinglish” is a good example of everything going right.

It all begins, of course, when an idea becomes words on a page. Hwang grew up in Southern California. His parents were immigrants who spoke different dialects, so the family communicated in English. Hwang never learned Chinese nor considered himself particularly Chinese. But in the same way children of Italians, the Irish, Jews and others groups inherit culture and ethnicity, Hwang felt Chinese in his bones.

“Chinglish” is the sometimes-deri-

sive term referring to blends of Chinese and English words that are often humorously inaccurate or nonsensical.

The play grew out of Hwang’s experiences when he began traveling to China for business a few years ago.

“I looked like everyone else there, but I’m culturally American and felt like a fish out of water. I began questioning the notions of cultural identity and how we all communicate and what we have to overcome as human beings as the world gets smaller and we try to understand each other.”

Hwang and Silverman were collaborating on another Hwang play when he mentioned his idea and she encouraged him to write a full script, which he did and she loved.

“That led to a reading,” Silverman says. “That’s when you get actors together, usually in a rehearsal room with music stands to hold the script pages, and they read through and see how it sounds and feels.”

When you have accomplished writers and directors attached to a project, invited producers may attend a reading. Silverman, who has an Obie award and numerous theater nominations for her work on new plays, says, “Readings give us the first sense of how something might work on stage. It often leads to rewrites and even more readings. With the “Chinglish” readings, David’s work was already really strong. It felt almost fully formed, ready to go.”

Epstein, who lives in Bedford, says, “I went to one of the readings in Chicago and was hooked immediately.

I hadn’t felt that excited about a new play in years.”

She has always been known for her good taste in new material. As a producer, Epstein has two Tony awards, for “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Children of a Lesser God,” and a host of other nominations and awards for original plays such as “Same Time, Next Year,” “Master Harold and the Boys,” and “Mark Twain Tonight.”

Epstein emphasizes that there are other producers who were aboard “Chinglish” before she was. “This is really Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel’s baby. I was invited in to help nurture it,” Epstein says. She then explains why we often see credits on a play that lists dozens of “producers.”

“There are ‘below the line’ producers – those who just bring money to the table – and there are ‘above the line’ producers, like Jeffrey and Jerry

and me, who invest money, but also are closely involved in the creative process and overseeing the whole venture.”

After several readings, plays often go into workshops. Some are “workshopped” or tried out in smaller theaters in the country, where they can build up a head of steam or just disappear. A great majority of them don’t make it past a reading, but with “Chinglish,” the producers felt it was strong enough to go straight to mounting a full production.

“The technical demands of this play are so unique and complicated that it didn’t make sense to try and workshop it,” Silverman says. She is hesitant to give away the surprises of what those technical demands are, except to say it has to do with clever staging and ways of handling the bilingual aspects.

“And consider that casting alone was quite an effort,” Silverman says. “The audition process involved four continents just so we could find the perfect Anglo actor who plays a translator for the American businessman. That actor had to speak perfect Mandarin.”

Silverman also took a trip with Hwang to Guiyang, China, where the play is set, to see exactly how it feels to be there and what the people are like.

“It’s my job to interpret David’s

work for the audience and give them an authentic experience. I had to go there and live it.”

“Maintaining integrity to the work,” is a phrase she repeats several times

time,” Silverman says, shaking her head as she remembers how exhausting previews were in Chicago and how soon they needed to regroup stamina for the Broadway opening at the Lon-

“The audition process involved four continents just so we could find the perfect Anglo actor who plays a translator for the American businessman. That actor had to speak perfect Mandarin.”

— Leigh Silverman

during lunch, her serious, dark eyes expressing exactly how important that concept is to her.

The production was set up at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and then even more grueling work began. It took just over a year from the first draft reading to when the play opened this past June, and Silverman says, “Keep in mind that is considered warp speed in the theater world. But we have that work ethic.” In contrast, “Well,” which she directed in 2006, was a nine-year process before it landed on Broadway.

Before a production “opens,” it usually has about a week of “previews.”

“That’s a very intense period of

gacre Theatre.

“During previews, we gauge the audience reaction, do final rewrites and set changes. The actors have to rememorize script changes. I would say the most important and essential element in presenting new plays is to use the preview period well.”

Then previews are over and the play is “frozen,” no more changes. The show must go on. Critics are invited and you hold your breath.

“It’s crazy when you think there is one big paper in New York with one important critic and shows can live or die on one major review,” Epstein says.

Even though “Chinglish” was such

a success in Chicago, loved and appreciated by Anglos and Asians equally, even though the talent – everyone from the writer, director, actors, producers, set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, stagehands – are some of the best and most accomplished in the business, you never know what’s going to happen when the curtain rises on Broadway.

But so far, everything surrounding the “Chinglish” production has enjoyed very good luck and odds are that it’s going to do extremely well in New York City.

“It really is so unique, ” Epstein says. “David brilliantly captures the complexities of Chinese and American communication and goes deep.”

Lunch is over and the waitress brings a plate with orange-tinted fortune cookies – an entirely American invention that has become a staple in Chinese restaurants here. We crack them open and squint at the tiny printed strips of paper.

Silverman reads hers aloud, “There are two ways to shine – as a candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“You won’t believe this,” Hwang says, laughing. “Mine says, ‘Learn Chinese.’”

We decide those little messages are omens of more good luck. n

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Mizner magic A touch of 1920s Palm Beach in New England

A

By Georgette Gouveia

Rock Hall is filled with coffered ceiling and elaborately carved fireplaces.

36

mid the society folk of New York City and Palm Beach in the Jazz Age, Addison Mizner could’ve outGatsbyed the Great Gatsby himself. The architect had a reputation for cynical mouthing off, so much so that he co-authored something called “The Cynic’s Calendar.” (Sample adage: “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawsuit.”)

Fortunately, he also had a reputation for designing marvelously eclectic homes for the rich and famous in his native California, New York and especially Florida. While many of these are gone, the one extant Mizner home built north of the Mason-Dixon Line happens to be in WAG country. Better still, it can be your home, too, for the price of a hotel stay.

Nestled in the Litchfield Hills and southern Berkshires, Rock Hall is a 10,000-square-foot manor house in Mizner’s trademark eclectic style, which was described by Alva Johnson in his book “The Legendary Mizners” and George B. Tindall in a 1965 American Heritage article as “Bastard-SpanishMoorish-Romanesque-Gothic-Renaissance-Bull Market-Damn-the-Expense.” Certainly, that style is apparent in Rock Hall’s stately Spanish-flavored stone and stucco exterior, dramatic coffered ceilings, elaborately carved fireplaces and richly textured guest suites (five in all).

There’s also a billiard room, a private movie theater, an inground pool, a grass tennis court and a marked hiking trail, all on 23 acres of specimen trees and perennial gardens that represented a collaboration between Mizner and the firm of Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted.

The circa 1912 house – on the National Register of Historic Places – has also added some 21st-century amenities, along with spa treatments, carriage rides, hot-air ballooning, kayaking, fly-fishing, antiquing, arts trekking and shopping.

How Mizner would’ve loved it all. He was born in San Francisco in 1872 and developed his passion for Spanish and Spanish colonial art and architecture

during a teenage trip with his father to Guatemala and a stint at the University of Salamanca in Spain. For a time he worked as a society architect and Japanese-landscape designer in New York City before ill health took him to Palm Beach at the end of World War I. There Mizner hooked up with Paris Singer, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune and onetime boyfriend of modern-dance goddess Isadora Duncan, and began designing clubs and mansions for various Vanderbilts, Wannamakers and Biddles. These were strong on warm hues, distressed accents (before there were distressed accents) and, integrating the landscape and the interior. Unfortunately, a Mizner design wasn’t as strong on blueprinting or backed by the most scrupulous business practices.

Soon Mizner and his roguish brother Wilson were vainly planning the resort city of Boca Raton amid a Florida land boom that went bust at the end of the ’20s, foreshadowing bad things to come.

(Sound familiar?)

Mizner, however, was lucky enough to land a commission in his native state, from businessman Alfred Dieterich, for whom Mizner had once created a house in Millbrook, N.Y. The new house, Casa

Billiard room

Bienvenita or Bienvenido, in Montecito, had everything Mizner fans love – a mouthwatering, earthy palette, recessed ceilings, commanding fireplaces, cloistered walkways, plenty of warm woods, geometric Mediterranean gardens and

Rock Hall

a stucco exterior flanked by pineappleshaped palm trees. It was among the evocative beauties featured in Tim Street-Porter’s “The Los Angeles House” (Clarkson Potter, 1995).

Mizner died penniless in 1933 and

many of his houses were sacrificed to 1950s’ redevelopment. However, at Rock Hall at least, the public can sit back and marvel at a man whose touch, like Gatsby’s, was a bit larcenous but still magic. n

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The digital evolution Thinking outside the frame

H

Story and Photographs by Bob Rozycki

olen Sabrina Kahn disarms you with a ready smile as she greets you inside the monolith she calls home during the day.

The Jacob Burns Film Center’s Media Arts Lab is a square of concrete, glass and steel that serves as the cool yin to the warm, upholstered yang of the center’s home in the former Rome Theater, less than an unspooled roll of film up Manville Road in Pleasantville.

Holen’s smile remains as she engages you in a philosophical discussion of not just film in the digital age but the “language” of image and sound and how it can be used to teach children everything from making movies to multiplication.

There’s a subliminal method of using multiplication in creating animation, Holen says, which requires mapping out movement and frame rates.

On one level, “the kids are working through a story, collaborating” and on another level “interacting with something as seemingly unrelated as math.”

Physics also comes into play through lighting and depth of field.

Learning the language of film and its cutting-edge technology isn’t mere kids’ stuff, however.

“Visual literacy hasn’t evolved yet.

That’s what’s exciting about it,” says Holen, who as the lab’s director of educational innovation is a teacher of teachers.

In her basement classroom, the board is filled with singular words.

Line, shape/form, color, value, texture, space/perspective comprise the elements or building blocks of film.

Once you have the building blocks, then comes their arrangement via pattern, rhythm/movement, proportion/ scale, balance, unity, emphasis.

Frame, shot, cut are the units of media.

Then there are the types of camera views, from an establishing shot to an extreme close-up, and camera movements. It’s like an elaborate diagram of a sentence.

The components represent the miseen-scène of visual literacy – an elusive and ever-evolving study of the language of image and sound.

Holen works with English language arts, social studies, science and math

38

teachers, “incubating ideas” and “pushing the limits of what you can do with different mediums.”

Literacy has been traditionally defined and measured via reading and writing. But the constant evolution of all things digital has changed everything from the way we get our news to the frequency with which we watch movies and how we watch them.

Films were once made by few for many, Holen says. Now thanks to social media sites such as YouTube, “movies” are now made by many for many.

While she doesn’t have a “single take” on YouTube, Holen says it’s a “democratizing opportunity.”

“I think there’s something utopic (about YouTube).” But she hastens to add, “Because it’s seen widely doesn’t mean it’s most artistic … it’s a messy aspect of democracy.”

Holen knows a thing or two about artistry, having been an editor and producer on a number of documentaries.

She was an associate producer on the 1998 Oscar-nominated feature documentary “Regret to Inform,” which followed director Barbara Sonneborn’s journey to Vietnam 20 years after her husband was killed in action. Holen is also the producer and editor of the 2005 film “Harsh Beauty,” which documented the lives of three eunuchs in India. It has been shown on CNN’s “World’s Untold Stories.”

Growing up in New York City, Holen picked up a still camera – a Pentax K1000 – at the age of 9 and shot black and white until college when she switched to color. She says she misses the tactile experience that came from popping open exposed 35mm film from canisters in the dark and feeding the film onto metal reels and placing them in light-tight stainless steel cans to be filled with D-76 developing chemical. She misses shooting in 16mm and Super 8.

In this digital age, that tactility has been lost.

“I think technologically we’re in a mid-moment. We are going through an intense movement of evolution technologically.”

Adding something to think about, she says, “You realize we create on the same computers we do our banking on.” n

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Tattoo you

An art form indelibly inked on the American psyche (and skin)

By Ryan Doran

N

ick Cacc, a tattoo artist and owner of Skinscapes North in Mahopac says“For many of us, tattooing is about a physical expression of who we are.”

At age 14, he began studying the art – which inserts indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin, causing a permanent change to the pigmentation – under his father, Bob, Skinscapes’ founder. Over the years, the younger Cacc has watched as the American tattoo has gone from being primarily an emblem of low-rent, even thuggish behavior to a multimillion-dollar, reality show-spawning industry embraced by artists and athletes alike. Idiosyncratic movie goddess and eternal Goth girl Angelina Jolie has myriad tattoos in the forms of calligraphy, crosses, tigers and flora. Soccer star David Beckham is inscribed with the names of his wife and children, along with images of Jesus and angels.

The tattoo has its origins in the healing practices of prehistoric Eurasia. But the West did not really develop a taste for it until the 18th century with sailors passing through Polynesia. (The word itself comes from the Samoan “tatau.”)

For a long time in America, the word “tattoo” conjured images of sailors adorned with anchors or sweethearts’ names. But that changed in the 1960s when rebel rocker Janis Joplin got a tattoo of a bracelet with a heart charm on her left breast, courtesy of San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. Thanks to Joplin, the tattoo took up residence at the intersection of art and popular culture.

As she demonstrated, the tattoo can be about sex, a relationship, a group, an aspiration. But always, it is about an identity.

“At its core, tattooing is the art of expressing yourself on the first canvas that God gave you, your skin,” Cacc said.

In the post-Oprah, digital age of 24/7 self-expression, the tattoo has found a wide audience. It’s not just for Popeye or the Hells Angels anymore.

“Today we get all types coming through the door,” Cacc said. “A biker can come in right after a father getting

40

Photograph by Matthew Gaeta

Skinscapes’ tattoo artist Tommy Muniz is a trained artist and teaches art classes in Westchester. Photograph by Ryan Doran

a tattoo in honor of his newborn son and right after that, a stockbroker can be sitting in the chair.”

Sometimes, the biker, newbie dad and stockbroker are one and the same person, though, Cacc points out, he would most likely be getting the tattoo in a place usually covered by clothing.

As a practicing artist, Cacc said it is always important

to be developing your skills and staying on top of trends.

“The most amazing thing in American tattooing is that it has combined all these different styles,” Cacc said.

“We have some of the greatest tattoo artists in the world right here. Conventions are a huge thing today, not just to show the public what tattooing can be and mean, but because we all get to learn from one another. It’s a gathering of artists.”

Cacc said the prevalence of tattoos has also given rise to a movement of untrained and inexperienced individuals called “scratchers.” Scratchers generally buy equipment and without proper training or hygiene, begin giving tattoos out of their home.

“People who just want to prick someone and don’t care about the result belittle our entire profession,” Cacc said.

“We train for years and years simply to achieve a chair and the opportunity to tattoo someone.”

Cacc said tattooing someone is an honor, because for that person it is often a significant decision. He said scratchers have become more ubiquitous since the arrival of reality television shows such as “Miami Ink,” “LA Ink,” “NY Ink,” “London Ink” and “Inked.”

“More people think because they can sketch, they can tattoo,” Cacc said. “There’s much more experience and training to it than that. It’s really frowned upon in the industry.”

He said artistic skills are more often a prerequisite for tattooing, not a free pass to forgo the entire apprenticeship development.

Despite the scratchers, Cacc said, “It’s an interesting time in tattooing.… But at the same time in public, people will still give you dirty looks for seeing art on your body.”

However, as much as people grimace at seeing a tattoo, he said, they also stop the tattooed, ask questions and admire the art.

While the tattoo has made inroads in the creative industries, it still requires a cover-up in many workplaces.

Still, there’s no denying that the controversial art form is indelibly inked on the forearm of Uncle Sam. n

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Fairfield County native Chase Finlay is one of ballet’s rising stars

By Georgette Gouveia

A god and his Muses: Chase Finlay with Maria Kowroski, left, Sara Mearns, right, and Teresa Reichlen, partially hidden, in the New York City Ballet’s “Apollo.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

ou don’t have to be an accountant to be a ballet dancer, of course, but there are times when it might help.

If music is grounded in physics – the so-called “music of the spheres” – then dance has an element of mathematics, specifically counting, as I am reminded while watching the New York City Ballet’s Chase Finlay and Lauren Lovette rehearse their roles in Peter Martins’ “Hallelujah Junction” at Lincoln Center.

“Step, kick, chassé. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” ballet master Lisa Jackson enumerates as she demonstrates the quick, intricate moves.

“Hallelujah Junction” is set to a piece of the same name for two pianos by John Adams, who is perhaps bestknown for his penetrating studies of power, “Nixon in China” and “Dr. Atomic,” which have been successfully performed across the plaza at The Metropolitan Opera.

His “Hallelujah Junction” sounds like a hard, driving rain, and the choreography by ballet master in chief Martins is no less relentless. Adding to the challenge – at least for the visitor – is the fact that the atmosphere inside the rehearsal room in the Samuel B. and David Rose Building is akin to the humid day bubbling outside.

But neither Finlay nor Lovette is the type to let you see them sweat, metaphorically speaking. Theirs is a breezy chemistry: They dance Tony and Maria in Jerome Robbins’ “West Side Story Suite.” And his Olympian blondness matched with her brunette sensuousness suggests Martins’ own partnership with Kay Mazzo (co-chairman of faculty at the City Ballet’s School of American Ballet) in the heady days of the 1970s.

More than that, though, it becomes clear after a few minutes that Finlay is not really counting anymore, but responding to the music alone.

“That’s really good, Chase,” Jackson says.

“It’s a little better,” he says, breathing hard during a pause.

“It’s a lot better,” she counters.

That musicality, that ability to feel and express music through movement, is what in the end separates the mere athlete from the true dancer. It has also helped spur Finlay’s swift ascent – he was recently promoted from the corps to the rank of soloist – leaving a trail of breathless balletomanes and critics in his wake.

Writing in the June 3 edition of The New York Times a month after Finlay’s triumphant turn in the title role of “Apollo” – one of City Ballet co-founder George Balanchine’s signature neoclassical ballets – Gia Kourlas described him as “naturally regal,” “a less uptight Mr. Darcy” and “the best thing to hit City Ballet since Sara Mearns began wowing audiences and critics in 2006.”

Finlay’s teachers aren’t surprised.

“He’s incredibly instinctive as a dancer and in his approach to his work. He’s a natural,” says ballet master Jean-Pierre Frohlich, who coached him in “West Side Story Suite” and Robbins’ “2 & 3 Part Inventions.” “His youth and energy in Robbins’ ‘West Side Story Suite’ made the role of Tony tangible. He makes the ballets look organic when he dances them.”

Talking in the Rose Building’s Music Room, Finlay wears such praise the way he sports his talent and beauty – with unassuming grace. He was born and bred in Fairfield, and even at the tender age of 20, he has the air of a real New England gentleman, pausing to hold the door

Chase Finlay, Ana Sophia Scheller, Sterling Hyltin and Sara Mearns. Photograph by Paul Kolnik

open for me after the draining rehearsal.

It’s also apparent that he enjoys “saying it with music,” as the phrase goes. He plays a bit of piano and learned the drums from his dad, Mark, an architect with his own business.

“For me, I work better with music,” Finlay says. “I’m not really counting. I like to listen my way through it and let the music carry me and let it bring me to do the steps.”

No doubt that musicality came in handy when he was plucked from the corps de ballet this past spring to dance the lead in “Apollo,” one of the seminal works of the 20th century.

The Russian-born Balanchine created the work in 1928 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes to a piece by his countryman Igor Stravinsky that married the choreography in its angular modernism. Most ballet lovers consider “Apollo” the key to all things Balanchine and the company he founded with Lincoln Kirstein, the City Ballet. “Apollo” has “Mr. B’s” – as he was affectionately known to his dancers – love of speed and amplitude, his wit and, above all else, his devotion to music, for which Apollo, the Greek god of truth and manly beauty and leader of the Muses, serves as a metaphor.

The challenge of dancing such a role – which has been portrayed by many of ballet’s great danseurs, including Finlay’s boss, Westchester resident Peter Martins – was not lost on the rookie.

But as Balanchine himself noted in his masterful “Complete Stories of the Great Ballets” (Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1977), which he wrote with Francis Mason, the ballet “Apollo” “concerns itself with…the youthful god who has not yet attained the manifold powers for which he will afterward be renowned among men.”

And that gave Finlay a way into the role.

“I tried to make him youthful,” he says. “He’s born into manhood but can’t figure it all out yet. That’s why I went in that direction. I felt he was still learning everything.”

Still, as he stood on the stage of the David H. Koch Theater, the City Ballet’s Lincoln Center home, on the night of May 5, Finlay says he was shaking.

Not so Chase, who decided on his career path around age 8, though he may not have known it. Attending a performance of the City Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,” he sat bolt upright in his seat as the male dancer performing the role of Tea began leaping about and told his mother, Jeanne, that’s what he wanted to do.

But, “the second the curtain went up, I lost myself in the role.”

When the curtain came down, he adds, “I kind of landed back in my body” – just in time for an ovation that would not let up until he took a solo bow.

Finlay’s career, as he himself dryly notes, was born of

the adage: Behind every great male dancer is an older sister who wanted to be a ballerina. In this case, the sister is Page, who went on to dance with the San Francisco Ballet and Oregon Ballet Theatre but has since opened a restaurant in Portland, for which brother Dirk, the woodworker and cabinet-maker in the family, has made a bar.

Kid brother Luke, a high school student, is keeping his career options opened.

Not so Chase, who decided on his career path around age 8, though he may not have known it. Attending a performance of the City Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,” he sat bolt upright in his seat as the male dancer performing the role of Tea began leaping about and told his mother, Jeanne, that’s what he wanted to do.

The Finlays enrolled their own leapfrog in Ballet Academy East in Manhattan before he went on to the School of American Ballet. (He also studied at the Whitby School in Greenwich and was home-schooled.)

In September of 2008, he became an apprentice with the City Ballet and a year later, a member of the corps. He was the recipient of the first Clive Barnes Award for dance in 2010.

Despite the proverbial meteoric rise, Finlay is a regular guy who likes lacrosse, football (wide receiver) and alternative rock. At home in Manhattan, people think his profession is cool, while on the road, kids flock to him.

But he knows there’s professional jealousy out there as well as men who still consider male dancers effete. He remains, however, unfazed.

After all, male dancers can more than take care of themselves, right?

“Oh,” he says, “absolutely.” n 45

Fall at the Bruce Museum Celebrate

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Embraced by two large rock outcroppings on a wooded site that slopes gently down to a verdant pond, Madeline and Arthur Rappaport’s modern 7,800-square-foot home in Pound Ridge brings the outside in through soaring glass walls that reveal nature’s everchanging scenes.

The view from the sunken living room of the twofloor, 13-room house is nothing short of spectacular, with a massive rear window showcasing the large pond surrounded by tall trees, native plantings and shrubs on a six-acre site. The overall effect is one of peace pervading the cycling seasons.

“If you live in a beautiful space like this, you don’t need therapy,” Arthur said. “We are simple people and the clean, understated architecture of our home suits us perfectly.”

An idea is born

Arthur is an international entrepreneur and his wife, a marketing executive in the banking industry. Madeline is from Long Island and Arthur from Manhattan. They met there, married, settled into an Upper West Side Apartment and had two children, Roxy, now 18 and Will, age 17.

“The apartment quickly became too small so we met an architect we liked, Gilles DePardon of the

firm of Ogawa/DePardon, and hired him to combine the apartment next door with ours,” Arthur said.

“We gave him complete creative control and he did a terrific job. We stayed for a while and then decided to move to northern Westchester because of the kids.

“Reflections” is a home where design, construction and the surrounding landscape all work together to create a very special living environment. All of the building materials were of the very highest quality, including Dover stone quarried in Vermont, steel and large expanses of energy-efficient glass.

We were married in Bedford and liked the area very much. We saw the virgin property at 15 Colonel Sheldon Lane in 1996, were taken with its beauty and decided to make the purchase.”

Arthur said that, once again, he provided an overarching concept and let DePardon take it from there: “I told him I wanted something modern and open and then let him go with the design.”

Madeline said she had a single specific request: “I wanted a screened room.”

DePardon built a scale model of the home that showed a large two-story residence in roughly an L shape that fit perfectly into the sloping site. The pond at the bottom of the slope is the focal point for the home’s design, with double-high windows extending across the rear façade to allow an unimpeded view.

His own man

After deciding to use only the best materials available for the home, Arthur took the brave step of acting as his own contractor.

“I put a trailer on the site where I spent most of my days and hired a dedicated crew,” he said. “They were true craftsmen and were very serious about their work. Many of them already knew one another so they had good working relationships. Gilles was also constantly on the site.”

Although the job was large and complex, things moved along quickly. “It was a year and a half from digging the foundation in 1990 to getting our certificate of occupancy,” Madeline said.

Acting as his own contractor was “an adventure,” Arthur said.

“Quality building materials are extremely expen49

tertops and state-of-the-art appliances. The kitchen flows seamlessly into the window-wrapped family room. Warmed by a large stone fireplace, this room is spacious enough to accommodate informal living and dining as well as grand entertaining.

Connected to the family room through an indooroutdoor garden room (Madeline’s screened porch!) and occupying its own wing, is a private office suite will a full bath, a stone terrace and separate entrance.

Directly ahead and down a flight of polished steps that lead to the formal living room with its 17-foot ceilings is that spectacular wall of glass framing the landscape.

A massive stone fireplace wall and gleaming wood floors add to the natural ambience.

sive, so I became much more prudent as a business person,” he said. “I paid cash up front for a lot of things and was able to save money there. And the fact that the crew worked so well together was another advantage, because time is money.”

Once the house was complete, the Rappaports said they looked upon it as a retreat.

“It is completely private and you can escape into your own world, surrounded by nature,” Arthur said.

“If you live in a beautiful space like this, you don’t need therapy. We are simple people, and the clean, understated architecture of our home suits us perfectly.”

— Arthur Rappaport

The result

“Reflections” is a home where design, construction and the surrounding landscape all work together to create a very special living environment. All of the building materials were of the very highest quality, including Dover stone quarried in Vermont, steel and large expanses of energy-efficient glass.

Natural light floods the home through a vast ex50

panse of glass, bringing the landscape into the interior. The Dover stone is carried through to the interior, marrying the outdoors – bordered by cut-stone walls and accented by rugged rock outcroppings – to the indoors.

The entire residence is characterized by open spaces that flow into one another, high ceilings and, oh, those views.

Complementing the dramatic modern design is an uncompromising attention to detail, with Spanish cedar wood windows and doors, Brazilian ipe wood, French limestone floors, Italian marble and cherry cabinetry and paneling. The residence also features a fully programmable European lighting system, masonry sub floors with radiant heat, five-zone central air conditioning and wiring for computer, phone, audio-visual and security systems.

First floor

Visitors approach the home through a forecourt defined by a garden wall running the length of the house. Additional stone elements lend an Asian feel.

The light-filled entrance hall provides the first look at the exceptional views throughout the house.

Directly ahead and down a flight of polished steps that lead to the formal living room with its 17-foot ceilings is that spectacular wall of glass framing the landscape. A massive stone fireplace wall and gleaming wood floors add to the natural ambience.

Bathed in more light, the dining room has a sliding glass wall opening to a large limestone paved terrace ideal for seasonal entertaining. It’s just steps from the kitchen, which features cherry cabinets, marble coun-

A mudroom with ample storage and a three-car garage complete this section of the home.

Adjacent to the entrance foyer, double doors open to the library, handsomely fitted with large horizontal windows overlooking the pond. An internal window connects the library to the living room below.

This wing of the residence also has two bedrooms, each with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, a private bath and stone terrace.

The master suite includes a spacious windowwrapped bedroom opening to a large deck overlooking the pond and property. A dressing room, luxurious master bath and ample closets serve the owners.

The lower level is fully finished and above grade. It includes a media screening room and exercise room with floor-to-ceiling walls of glass that open to an expansive stone terrace; a hall bath with room for a sauna; a guest bedroom with full bath and two bedrooms, each with floor-to-ceiling glass walls; and a private terrace joined by a marble bath. A laundry room, workshop, utility room and storage area complete the lower level.

Emptying nest

When asked how he felt about moving from such a beautiful retreat, Arthur said simply, “Life changes.”

“The kids will be going away to college now and our lives will be different. Just like we came here from Manhattan, we will adjust to something different. At this point I don’t know where we are going to go, but Austin, Texas is a possibility. We are at peace with moving on. As you get older, you need to move ahead in a positive fashion.

There’s always something out there for you if you look.”

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wares

Designing woman Christina Sullivan Roughan on the art of home decor

By Patricia Espinosa This family room had to be sophisticated, friendly and functional to fulfill the client’s requirements. The chairs in front of the fireplace are from Roman Thomas, the blond wood console from Plantation LA, the sofas are custom and the carpet from Patterson, Flynn and Martin. Photograph courtesy of Tocar Interior Design

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A

s a child growing up in central Massachusetts, interior designer Christina Sullivan Roughan remembers how she always loved to make things pretty.

“Even at a young age, I loved glamorous things, things that sparkled, exquisite details,” she says.

So it’s not surprising that after college and a course of study at the Paris Fashion Institute, she landed a coveted internship with creative services at Ralph Lauren, where her first job was archiving and cataloging the fabrics, silhouettes and ornamentations of vintage garments for use as inspiration by designers for future collections.

From that position she went on to spend 10 years at Polo Ralph Lauren, designing and overseeing the implementation of retail stores and showrooms worldwide. Building off her success at RL and then Tommy Hilfiger, Roughan launched her own design firm, where her talent for combining modern and traditional interiors in unexpected ways garnered the attention of such prominent clients as Donna Karan and Takashimaya, along with interior design editors. Indeed, Roughan’s work has graced the pages of magazines such as House Beautiful, Elle Decor, Quest and WAG! Determined to expand her business, she formed Tocar Design with Susan Bednar Long. For 12 years, their projects encompassed high-end residential commissions in Westchester and Fairfield counties, New York City, the Hamptons, Philadelphia’s Main Line, Park City, Utah and London as well as work with Oceania Cruise Lines and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. They even completed several boutique projects, including a luxury yacht.

Today, Roughan runs her own firm, Roughan Interior Design, in Greenwich.

Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with her about the art of home design.

Our focus this month in WAG is the art of living. With that in mind, do you set out to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony when designing a client’s home?

“Each of Roughan’s interiors is designed with our clients’ needs and desires in mind. The process is all about what the clients wish to convey in the look of their homes. I am delighted to say that the majority of Roughan’s clientele are happy people. Therefore, their interiors tend to convey a sense of joyful sophistication.”

Some people make a distinction between interior decorating and interior design. Is there a difference?

“This is a question that many people ask. In my opinion, a decorator tends to work with existing floor plans, rework the space, choose paint colors, throw pillows, etc. A designer will move walls, create floor plans for each space, design custom furniture, convert bathrooms and kitchens and work with architects to complete a fuller vision of the home.”

Do you see interior design as an art form?

“Oh yes, it’s like an open canvas, when you start designing a space. Every detail creates layers of personality that shape each room. Every color, furniture, accessory should be well thought out and designed with beauty as well as function.

Good design is design that is functional as it is an expression of the way we live.

Roughan designs interiors to live by.”

So how do you then balance your vision with the needs of the client without compromising your art?

“Every client is different. Some may want to be involved from the beginning

This living room captures Christina Sullivan Roughan’s signature look – a mix of traditional, represented by the Old Masters-style painting, and modern, evoked by the furnishings’ clean lines.

through the end, and others do not. It’s all about organizing and prioritizing our vision to accommodate our clients’ lifestyles. That is how we achieve design balance without compromising our art.”

Is there an artist or architect that you draw inspiration from?

“Inspiration appears in so many ways, and I have favorites at different times in my life. Currently, I have been inspired

by Bernard McWilliams’ photography.

His prints tend to look like Rothko’s.

The colors are so vibrant and beautiful, they look like painting. Some designers who are visionaries that I admire are Billy Baldwin, David Hicks and more recently Ralph Lauren Creative Services (where I was trained). Alfredo Paredes and Karen Eliot Ralbowsky have created visions for RL for years and are amazing at what they do. When it comes to architecture, Jean Michel Frank and Robert Stern are the ones whose books I constantly go back to for inspiration.”

What would you say are your greatest influences when it comes to your work?

“My greatest influences are the experiences I have had and continue to have in my life such as schooling in Paris when I

was 19 and visiting Yves Saint Laurent’s couture house, traveling to Turkey and gasping at magnificent history and architecture at the Hagia Sophia, volunteering in Haiti and experiencing the warmth of people and such a beautiful culture, listening to music from Bach to U2 to Mumford & Sons. These influences continue to shape and influence my interiors.”

Most designers say they don’t follow trends. But what our readers really want to know, especially as we head into the fall season, is what’s hot in home decor?

‘Funny, as I was just thinking about trends. Lately, I see a lot of shades of black, white, and taupe, with splashes of rich vibrant colors such as aubergine, moss and cordovan in the accessories.

This kind of color combination seems to be appearing all over the place and could definitely be described as a ‘trend.’”

How would you describe your signature look?

“My signature style has always been modern/traditional and you can see it through my body of work for the past 20 years. I love creating interiors that are sophisticated, tailored, crisp and most important, friendly.” n

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wear

A perfect pairing The ultimate symbiosis of art and fashion

By Zoë Zellers

A dress from Alexander McQueen’s “Widows of Culloden” collection marries fine art and high fashion. All photographs, unless specified, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 54 Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

T

he lines were snaking around “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s blockbuster celebration of the late fashion designer.

On a balmy late-summer morning, just days before the exhibit’s closing, eager New Yorkers, tourists, fashionistas and even frat brothers were all surprisingly content, waiting to experience a moment.

Call it eye candy or social commentary, but there’s no doubt that McQueen’s theatrical couture finds the sweet spot where art meets fashion.

“It really seems that he got to the point where sculpture and high fashion came together in a perfect end,” said Bartholomew F. Bland, director of curatorial affairs at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers.

It’s not like this hasn’t been done before. In 2000, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum staged a Giorgio Armani exhibit, sparking controversy over its perceived commercialism, while a year later, The Met presented Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House fashion sensibility and then in 2005 exhibited designs by Coco Chanel alongside looks by the house’s current designer, Karl Lagerfeld.

The highly publicized recent symbiosis between museum and couture house draws attention to the larger, longtime

Photograph by Zoë Zellers

From “It’s a Jungle Out There”

relationship between art and fashion. At its simplest, it’s as basic as a reprint of the “Mona Lisa” on a black T-shirt. But it can also be as complex as an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Vanity Fair. And indeed, Vanity Fair has throughout its almost 100year history sought inspiration from fine art and the movies while employing many of the high priests of photography, including Cecil Beaton, Arnold Genthe and

Edward Steichen. The current issue features some of its contemporary “Masters of Style,” including David Seidner, who styled society siblings Pia Getty, Alexandra von Fürstenberg and Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece, as John Singer Sargent’s “The Wyndham Sisters” for the mag’s June 1995 edition.

But the relationship is even richer than this. Just as painters and sculptors have

From “The Horn of Plenty”

paid intimate attention to texture and drapery in their work, fashion designers have used artsy runway creations and magazine campaigns as calling cards for their prêt-à-porter collections.

Couture speaks to grander themes, showcasing innovation and craftsmanship, while everyday collections take tamer approaches.

“Everyday wear is meant to be just that,

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and therefore, it’s a basic element that’s much simpler with less thought involved, because it is just for everyday,” said Roberto Dutesco, a fashion and fine art photographer. “I can photograph (a T-shirt) in a million different ways…. But if I photograph a long dress, then I will have to think of my options and why I would place that element in a certain environment.”

The McQueen exhibit and equally popular catalog offer perfect examples of the subtle but unmistakable distinction between artistic couture and stylish everyday wear. There are many items a woman could wear – the hourglass power suits, the ’50s-style leather dress, the Empire gowns, the crisp mod military jackets that speak to his background as a Savile Row tailor. And let’s not forget that his successor, Sarah Burton, designed the muchadmired, much-copied wedding dress for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

But much of McQueen’s work has a kind of macabre theatricality. Jackets with impala horns, shimmery jellyfish ensembles, eveningwear out of “Swan Lake” and psychedelic rollerblade outfits suggest a twilight world that was underscored by the exhibit’s moody, baroque design.

“His fashions were an outlet for his emotions, an expression of the deepest, often darkest, aspects of his imagination,” Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute, said of McQueen, who commit-

ted suicide in 2010.

Among those whose lives were touched

by McQueen is the New York-based Dutesco.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I had met him many, many years ago when he was no one, and he was an extraordinary guy then.

And he’ll always be that, even though he’s no longer here. His artistry is a true statement of what he was able to create.”

The trajectory of Dutesco’s career has taken him to the intersection of art and fashion with major campaigns in Elle, GQ, Vogue and Vanity Fair as well as exhibits at the Samuel Owen Gallery in Greenwich and The National Arts Club in Manhattan. Among his photographic series is “Chasing the Wild,” documenting wild horses on Sable Island off the Canadian coast.

McQueen was an artist, the ultimate expressionist, and to him, “Fashion (was) just the medium.” Dutesco, who trained as a sculptor, would agree that when it comes to art and fashion, the Marshall McLuhan notion that “the medium is the message” is somewhat passé.

“Just as artistry has transcended in many different ways, from prehistoric times when we were painting on caves to now, doing art on an iPad, there are many different ways in which one can express oneself,” Dutesco said, “and they’re very much interrelated.” n

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Two for the show Janet Langsam and Ryan Odinak talk arts

By Georgette Gouveia They are two of the people whom artists, patrons and cultural organizations alike rely on to spearhead arts advocacy in WAG country. So what do Janet T. Langsam, CEO of ArtsWestchester, and Ryan Odinak, executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County, think about the current state of the arts locally? Recently, they took time from their schedules to answer a few questions for us.

How does your organization advocate for the arts?

Langsam: “We believe the arts touch everyone. The arts are essential to a comprehensive education, important to parents and businesses looking to attract a skilled workforce. The arts boost tourism and enhance the hospitality industry. The arts nurture the creative thinkers necessary to keep our economy competitive. The arts are healing. And of course, on a strictly philosophical basis, the arts are fundamental to our free society. History has repeatedly shown us that ‘Man cannot live on bread alone.’”

Odinak: “The Cultural Alliance of

Fairfield County is part of a state and national network of advocates who follow issues affecting the arts and culture sector. We moniJanet Langsam tor the state and Photograph by Bob Rozycki national budget process, issue calls-to-action and speak before legislative committees.”

In a tough economy, what can arts lovers do to support their passion, beyond attending events and writing checks?

Langsam: “They can share their stories about how the arts made a difference in their lives so we, as a civilized society, can embrace the idea that arts and culture are an important facet of the American dream. Only then will we end the marginalization of the arts as a ‘frill.’”

Odinak: “Arts lovers can become part of the communities that surround arts

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organizations they are passionate about.

This means volunteering, telling other people about the organizations you love and finding Ryan Odinak ways to connect Photograph by ©David Bravo to your own creativity through educational programs.”

What are you most looking forward to in the new season?

Langsam: “Being surprised.”

Odinak: “I personally love to go to the theater for a great play, to see visual arts exhibits and to participate in creative writing workshops. I am looking forward to getting back into my own creative writing and seeing Tennessee William’s ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ at the Westport Country Playhouse.”

When did you know the arts were your calling?

Langsam: “Unfortunately not when

Mrs. Goren, my third grade teacher, cast me as a flower in ‘The Nutcracker’s’ ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ as I didn’t ‘blossom’ in the role nor have I ever really regarded the arts as a calling. Rather, it is creativity that has always been important to me. The arts are about ideas and I love good and/or new ideas. Some people get that kick out of chemistry or math. But for me, it’s a painting or a play.”

Odinak: “When I was 13, I wrote an essay straight out of my head about the universality of music and it won first place in my junior high school literary magazine. The same year I painted my first landscape, which my grandmother hung on her wall. So I guess you could say at age 13.”

Which artwork do you turn to when you want to escape?

Langsam: “Nature.”

Odinak: “Standing in front of an ethereal Mark Rothko painting completely transports me. Escaping into my own art, whether writing or painting, is an exhilarating, if sometimes frustrating, escape also.” n

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mon amour, Caramoor A maestro’s heart runs deep

M

ichael Barrett has a thing for four-letter words.

Like Guam – his birthplace.

Or Moab – his “little miracle in the desert” of a music festival.

And, an affinity for unamplified, unplugged live music.

“I love making it. I love listening to it.”

That love extends to the “Garden of Great Music,” the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, where the blue-eyed Barrett, CEO and general director, is ringmaster of a show for all seasons.

Right now it’s mid-morning in late summer. A blanket of humidity has descended on the 90-acre site, which is crowned by an eclectically artful, Mediterranean-style house museum.

The enveloping thickness is further enhanced by a crescendo of cicadas, the resident performers in these lush woodlands this time of year. They make their annual debut around July 26.

“When the frogs start singing down here in the ponds, boom – April 4,” Barrett says, with a snap of his fingers. “It’s amazing.”

Now in his eighth year, Barrett was putting a wrap on the 66th season of the acclaimed Caramoor International Music Festival with three days of jazz.

He conducts our stroll through the gardens and grounds with a certain dynamism, illustrating each thought in a deliberate step or sway of a shoulder.

“What is your title? Are you an editor? A journalist?” he questions, as you – the consummate control freak – say something like “jack-of-all-trades,” to which you get an “Oh, you’re one of those.”

Perhaps he identifies.

As conductor, pianist, educator and festival organizer, he’s no one-trick pony.

“Look at any major organization. They have a chief executive and an artistic director. They have negotiations… and battles. It’s up to the artistic director to say, ‘I need more money to put on this fabulous program.’ It’s the executive director’s job to say, ‘I’m going to try and find that for you, but the board says this and I have to limit you to the following.’”

Budgets aren’t sexy.

Booking Broadway darling Kelli O’Hara for the Caramoor Fall Festival, is. (See related article on the new season in this issue.)

When you are chief executive and artistic director, you learn to “have those discussions” with yourself.

Michael Barrett Photograph by Gabe Palacio

60

By Kelly Liyakasa

Michael Barrett conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Photograph by Gabe Palacio

Fundraising has taken a hit and that stings.

“You have this amazing, beautiful property with aspirations of maintaining this amazing property… and it’s a little heartbreaking to me that it’s not better supported.

How many people drive by Caramoor but don’t come here. You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that.”

With all of the joy that comes from one’s art, there is always the painful reminder that your passion may be met with lesser enthusiasm – or worse – indifference.

“Caramoor has a history and it’s been here for all this time and it’s magical,” he says of the summer estate that banker Walter T. Rosen and wife, the former Lucie Bigelow Dodge, bequeathed as an arts center in 1945. “I’m kind of humbled by that and get the responsibility of what that means and I want people to understand that and I want them to respect it and I want them to take advantage of it.”

It’s a place for people of all musical walks of life. (Think Gilbert and Sullivan meets Malinese songstress Oumou Sangaré).

Bringing them together is a symphony in itself.

“Most venues, they book. They’re bookers,” he says.

“They say, ‘OK, we want that act,’ and it’s the string quartet doing what they just did at Lincoln Center.”

No, not his forte.

In fact, he’s wincing.

“That doesn’t interest me,” he says. “I’m a musician…

I kind of get in my artists’ heads and faces and say, ‘Love the program, but I have a different idea. What if we did...’

and I try to engage their creative juices.”

Or birth new ideas, like a summer collaboration with Music from Copland House on “Prizing the Pulitzer,” a two-concert series and panel discussion on composers who had won the award – and their overlooked counterparts, including Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington.

And Leonard Bernstein, or “Lenny,” who Barrett says,

“I’m a musician… I kind of get in my artists’ heads and faces and say, ‘Love the program, but I have a different idea. What if we did...’ and I try to engage their creative juices.”

— Michael Barrett

“taught me the value of all kinds of music.”

There is a stark decrescendo in his delivery.

“When I met Leonard Bernstein, I was very much a classical music snob,” he acknowledges. “If it was contemporary music, it wasn’t going to be Bernstein or Copland. It was going to be Bartók and Stravinsky. I really came out of that bias that American music was second-rate.”

For five years, he served as an assistant conductor to

Bernstein, who passed away in 1990.

“Lenny opened my eyes and ears to the value and beauty of American music.”

And now he is doing the same for others. About 5,000 grade-school students “from Harlem to Orange County” come to Caramoor each year.

There are also five on-site mentoring programs, including the Rising Stars and Vocal Rising Stars, the musical equivalent of a high-intensity workout. “(Music) unleashes part of your brain and allows it to function in a way that helps you in life,” he says. “The human brain and the human psyche are so much more complicated than fitting into some grid and questionnaire.”

Music literacy is about “emotional intelligence” and the breed of person you become.

Like the kind of person who would dream up the Moab Music Festival 20 years ago with wife, violist Leslie Tomkins, in red-rock Utah, a place where pianos and people sit in one of nature’s shrines and there is nothing but beauty and all you can do is listen.

“I’ve spent my whole life learning how to listen,” says Barrett.

He’s in his office now, and his fall productions are near.

“I’m sick of those cicadas singing in the trees right now.”

He flings a hand toward an open window.

“But they have their own kind of music. They might irritate me during a very quiet passage of a string quartet, but right now they’re beautiful.” n 61

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Of palettes and palates Atmosphere, presentation influence dining

By Kelly Liyakasa

A

rtists have had a longstanding flirtation with food.

Legends like Renoir and Van Gogh brought inspiration from their palates to the palette.

French Impressionist Claude Monet was no starving artist, rumored to rise at dawn to feast on fine cuisine. His sweeping Giverny abode in Normandy did double-duty as a gathering place for other artists and five-star guests.

Monet was a locavore in every sense of the word. He had his own vegetable and herb garden. Japanese woodcut prints dressed up his dining room, where he would host holiday meals and lavish dinner parties.

Monet and his fellow artists adhered to the notion that food and art together just make sense.

For modern-day artistes like the chef, the interior designer and an even newer phenomenon known as the food stylist – cuisine is their canvas.

“For most chefs, it’s important they cook to their clientele and their ambiance and surroundings,” said Ethan Kostbar, executive chef at Moderne Barn in Armonk.

“For me, it’s a very rural area and I wanted to make sure my food had a rustic, country aspect to it.”

Moderne Barn was designed by Livanos Restaurant Group to be just that – a modern with DavidWAG_Layout 1 7/16/11 7:05 PMbarn Page 1 an “ur-

Chopped tower salad by chef Elyce Jacobson of Skinny Buddha in Mount Kisco. Photograph by Diana Costello/CoCommunications

ban country chic” motif. There’s wood as far as the eye can see, with equine prints on the walls by Roberto Dutesco, who famously photographed the horses of

Canada’s Sable Island.

Kostbar wanted a plate that he could “build high on” to match the food with the expanse of the Moderne Barn ceiling. In this case, the atmosphere of the room is paramount.

Yet is mustn’t be obvious.

“I think you try to do colors that are interesting, but you don’t want to be too trendy and have someone look and say, ‘Oh, that was a trend in the 90s’,” said Sheila Goldman, principal at Goldman Design Group in Greenwich.

About 90 percent of the firm’s business comes from restaurateurs. Goldman’s portfolio includes Cana Wine Bar in a Gothic Revival church that once thumped late into the New York City night as club Limelight.

“I think the trend now is people are looking for a neater, cleaner, sleeker look,” she said. “We’re combining industrial with country. If it’s Italian, people want a more casual look. Nobody wants to go into a stuffy Italian restaurant with white tablecloths and waiters in tuxedos.”

Kostbar also believes that less is more.

As well as the true artist, this chef despises unnecessary ornamentation on a plate. (Hey, there are no extra notes in Mozart.)

Like that sprig of thyme on a luscious lamb chop or an inedible shell of a lobster to detract from the real deal.

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Egg white omelet filled with sautéed tomatoes and onions and topped with smoked salmon and capers from Skinny Buddha.

Photograph by Diana Costello/Co-Communications

Art in food personified at Equus Fine Dining and Historic Tavern, Castle on the Hudson, Tarrytown.

“Urban, country chic”at Moderne Barn.

Photograph by Moderne Barn

“I want to showcase my food against a white or wood or cast-iron background and let that be the canvas for the food,” Kostbar said. “I don’t like overly designed dishes…

I look for elegant, sturdy plate-wear as a canvas for the food we’re dishing out.”

At The Cookery in Dobbs Ferry, Mario Batali protégé and chef/owner David DiBari also has a few choice words – very few – for his porcelain and cutlery.

“F#5$ plates,” he says, putting down a grilled pizzette during Saturday-night rush at his hip rivertown noshery.

“The food speaks for itself. And you can quote me on that.”

As long as the fare fits the vessel on which it arrives, he says, when it comes to vision, it’s all about “what the food does for the plate.”

It’s likely that lovers of DiBari’s Buttery Salty Potatoes with Parmigiano and Slovenian Fleur de Sel, would concur.

International food stylist and classically trained chef 64

Nir Adar, a Briarcliff Manor resident, acknowledges the discrepancy between what’s aesthetic and what’s edible.

“We all love Big Macs at times. The beauty of it is that it’s disgusting, but also delicious,” he noted.

That thought inspired a piece of work.

Adar was one of 10 American culinary artists selected to display work at the International Design Biennale in Saint-Etienne, France in 2004, where he created the “Deliciously Disgusting” installation to address the growing obesity epidemic.

Adar also created a 48-inch tall Eiffel Tower of ice cream for a Forbes Magazine shoot covering the HäagenDazs company.

For Adar, the look trumps all.

“Visual is most important,” he said. “First, it’s what you see. Then, it’s the smell. Then, the taste. People say, ‘The food tastes great,’ but they’re already in the third stage after they use their first senses. Presentation is very

important. The more appetizing it looks, the human brain says, ‘This is how it tastes.’”

This is especially important when an artist or chef desires a specific response from the patron or diner.

Chef Elyce Jacobson, who caters corporate lunches for hedge funds with company In Good Taste, co-owns Skinny Buddha, a Mount Kisco-based boutique fitness business that melds sweat equity with organic cuisine for clients.

“I’m all about the aesthetics of food,” she said. “I’m into organic and local and natural, and I want everything to look like it came from the garden.”

When taking an overweight or overburdened client to a place of physical and mental nirvana, seeing is believing: “You’re not only tasting the freshness, but you’re also visually seeing how fresh it is. I want it to look almost too good to eat. I feel like my cooking – that’s how I nurture people.” n

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The The first family of martial arts Gracie family, with Connecticut ties, gives jiu-jitsu a new twist

By Ryan Doran

W

hat the Kennedys are to politics, the Rockefellers are to finance and the Fords are to cars, the Gracie family is to martial arts. It is out of this pedigree that Marcio Stambowsky has built a life in Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Norwalk.

Stambowsky, a sixth-degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu master, is one of the “Famous Five” promoted to the rank of black belt under the legendary Rolls Gracie prior to his early death at age 31 in 1982.

“I was born in Brazil and I was brought up on Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” Stambowsky said with a strong Rio accent. He began studying the discipline at the age of 14 in the first Gracie Academy in Rio de Janiero at the urging of his childhood friend Maurico Gomes, father of world champion Roger Gracie and another of Rolls’ star pupils.

“Brazilian jiu-jitsu is not so much about brute strength but seeing things in your opponent and knowing yourself and how you can use that,” Stambowsky said.

and competes with his uncle, former UFC competitor Renzo Gracie, in New York City.

The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) – the most watched mixed martial arts tournament in the world –

“With jiu-jitsu, there is the pull of the mental and physical aspect of the sport. With the Gracie style, you find a new way to approach life.”

— Marcio Stambowsky

Norwalk Brazilian jiu jitsu master Marcio Stambowsky of the Gracie Academy.

After being introduced to jiu-jitsu and judo by Japanese immigrants to Brazil, Carlos and Hélio Gracie created an offshoot that relies on ground techniques, leverage and position,

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rather than size and muscle. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is distinguished from the traditional Japanese form by the notable joint-locks and choke holds used to defeat opponents. (It is also distinct from the more traditional Brazilian martial art of capoeira, which was developed by African slaves as a selfdefense mechanism and is generally characterized by powerful kicks.)

Hélio, who in his youth was the runt of five brothers, added the element of leveraging an opponent’s force against him through grappling and position.

The values the brothers developed demonstrate that a smaller, weaker person can successfully defend against a bigger, stronger assailant by using proper technique.

Now into its third generation of world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters, the Gracie family has schools in Brazil, the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Australia as well as more than 40 relatives who have competed on the world-class level. Stambowsky is not only a disciple but an in-law as well, having married one of Carlos’ granddaughters. Today he has academies in Norwalk and Bridgeport called Gracie Sports.

“Jiu-jitsu is something you can do your entire life, everyday,” Stambowsky said. “We get all ages, all types in the gym. It is a very harmonizing place to be.”

Nevertheless, he has passed on a competitive spirit to his son, Neiman Gracie Stambowsky, who has placed consistently in the top five in the Pan American tournament and placed third at the World Championships. Neiman teaches

is an example of the thriving and prolific nature of the Brazilian style of jiu-jitsu.

Rorion Gracie, who co-founded the tournament in 1993, and his younger brother, Royce, went on to become the first and second UFC champion. In 2010, the UFC generated nearly $500 million just in revenue for pay-per-view events.

Modern UFC champions BJ Penn, Frank Mir and Chuck Liddell have all studied the Gracie style of jiu-jitsu to participate in the UFC, where combatants in all styles of martial arts compete.

But for Stambowsky, nothing provides the clarity of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Others agree.

On any given day, his studio may have lawyers, college students and sanitation workers all competing on the same stage together. Workouts at Gracie Sports consist of 20 students engaged in long stretching, warm-up and conditioning sessions, followed by pairing off and sparring.

“Learning an opponent quickly is all part of the martial art,” Stambowsky said.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu can look a bit like wresting, and rightfully so: Gracie family members have chosen moves and elements of American wrestling and the Russian martial art of sambo and incorporated them into the style.

Stambowsky watches over the sessions, lending guidance to the developing warriors.

“With jiu-jitsu, there is the pull of the mental and physical aspect of the sport,” he said. “With the Gracie style, you find a new way to approach life.” n

week

Spaesthetics These retreats restore mind, body and inner artiste

By Cappy Devlin hen we think of spas, we think of massages that hit the sweet spot, relaxing in the Jacuzzi with friends, restorative herbal wraps and zesty veggie drinks. But what if the spa also meant massaging some clay, relaxing with music or restoring your spirit while writing in a journal?

At these deluxe spas, the arts are an integral part of the programming. After an idyllic retreat of self-discovery, you leave not only with renewed artistic energy, but with the sense that your whole being has been re-created.

W

Washington, Conn. mayflowerinn.com

MAYFLOWER INN AND SPA

The Mayflower Inn and Spa is in the picturesque town of Washington, Conn., about an hour from Westchester County. In this superb setting, the Mayflower blends the New England countryside with the elegance of Relais & Châteaux five-star, five-diamond accommodations. Each of the 30 individually designed guest rooms is a lavish retreat. Outdoor excursions include hiking, biking, kayaking, birdwatching, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

The 20,000-square-foot Mayflower Spa is an all-inclusive destination within a destination. The spa concierge helps each guest plan the ultimate personalized experience that provides you with nourishing, energizing, purifying and restorative treatments, as well as soul-enhancing rituals and a vast array of classes. Choose from aquatic ballet in the indoor pool, a Thai massage, Wild Lime Shiatsu or the Hammam bathing ritual that relaxes you on a profound level.

Executive Chef Justin Ermini prepares regular menus for dining as well as special spa menus. Guests take lunch in the spa building and

The couples’ Thai Massage at Miraval is a particularly sensuous experience.

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dinner in a separate small dining room in the inn. Fine wines and cocktails are offered.

Mayflower’s unusual creative classes include memoir writing. There is also a labyrinth that you can walk to quiet the mind and allow the intuitive spirit to bubble to the surface.

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Hawley, Pa. thelodgeatwoodloch.com The Lodge at Woodloch, a $42 million-plus destination spa, offers complete spa programs, treatments, numerous outdoor adventure activities, golf, classes and packages in a pristine mountain retreat environment. On 150 wooded acres in northeast Pennsylvania, The Lodge is an oasis for personal awakening and renewal just two hours from Connecticut and New York.

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The rejuvenating world of Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Mass., begins at the Bellefontaine Mansion.

modations and a 40,000-square-foot spa.

Each guest room has its own private veranda. The spa facilities contain 27 treatment rooms, including couples’ suites.

The Aqua Garden has coed therapeutic soaking pools with four- and eight-foot HydroMassage Water Walls; an indoor pool for aqua classes; an outdoor, horizonedge whirlpool with a radiant-heat deck for year-round use; and a 3,500-squarefoot cardio weight studio.

Tree, the hotel’s award-winning gourmet restaurant, is overseen by Chef Peter Schott.

“I have a passion for fresh, clean foods,” he says. “We emphasize seasonal, organic, locally grown foods on our menu selections and concentrate on portion size and amazing taste. My favorite thing is making others happy. Healthy food wouldn’t be truly ‘healthy’ if it weren’t enjoyed to the fullest.”

Complement your dining experience with fine wines and spirits. And feast on

cooking demonstrations and chef-hosted events in a state-of-the-art kitchen.

Cooking is among the many creative offerings at The Lodge, where a studio affords you the space in which to discover your inner artiste. Plunge into watercolor painting, drawing or drumming. In the evening, a fire circle with storytelling and music draws you further into your inner self.

CANYON RANCH

Lennox, Mass. canyonranch.com/lenox Whether you want to relax, refresh or rejuvenate, Canyon Ranch is the ultimate New England health resort and spa getaway, just a few hours from New York City or Connecticut in lovely Lenox, Mass.

Canyon Ranch is all about healthy pleasures. From its signature Canyon Stone Massage to the candlelit Euphoria Body treatment, the ranch’s deft touch reduces stress, relaxes your muscles and makes you feel so good. Its spa treatments combine ancient, traditional and modern therapies to restore balance and re-energize body and mind.

The spa offers a choice of 126 sumptuous guest rooms and suites to meet your needs. Award-winning Canyon Ranch cuisine raises the culinary bar, with chefs and nutritionists teaming to create abun-

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dant, satisfying food. For your dietary concerns, Canyon Ranch has a selection of vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free dishes. Alcohol is not served at Canyon Ranch.

Throughout the year, Canyon Ranch has themed events, which are complimentary. “Creative You – Express Yourself” is one way to explore new dimensions and gain fresh insights into yourself through painting, dance, culinary arts, jewelrymaking and other crafts.

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Tucson, Arizona miravalresorts.com For a longer getaway, fly to Tucson, Ariz., and stay at the top-rated Miraval Resort and Spa which is nothing less than a life-changing and life-reaffirming experience. Set at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains, the 400-acre Miraval is an all-inclusive destination spa that caters to complete tranquility. Guests can take part in more than 100 opportunities to reflect, learn and grow from Miraval’s Clue-In self-discovery activities and programs as well as Dr. Andrew Weil’s Integrative Wellness Program. Guests can also wind down with Miraval’s world-renowned Chill-Out spa services that unlock and unleash your senses as never before.

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The Lodge at Woodloch in Pennsylvania’s lake region offers such amenities as pools with HydroMassage Water Walls.

Miraval has 118 beautifully appointed guest rooms and suites situated for privacy and comfort. Dining in the Cactus Flower Restaurant, Chef Chad Luethje offers guests a range of repasts to relish from vegan delicacies to mouth-watering Kobe beef. The expert chefs craft the dishes you desire and find the perfect wine or cocktail accompaniment.

Miraval has an excellent artists-in-residence program, in which many guests create their own sculpture or paintings and

bring their artwork home with them.

Unique to Miraval is a partnership with National Geographic that provides guests with weekend photography workshops and retreats.

In essence, Miraval is a full mind, body and lifestyle revamp, where the benefits linger long after you are back at home.

For more information, call Cappy Devlin, “The Duchess of Travel,” at (914) 241-0383. n

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wine&dine

Vintage art

By Geoff Kalish, MD

In an attempt to attract buyers, many vintners release bottles with “pretty” labels that often belie the quality of the product they contain –too frequently one-dimensional, overpriced plonk. However, a few producers feature bottles with yearly-changing labels generated specifically for the product that stand out for artistic excellence, and as a boon to consumers, hold superb wine.

Indeed, in 1946 Baron Phillipe de Rothschild, the proprietor of Bordeaux’s famed Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, originated the concept of a different artist designing a new label for each year’s product. These artists have ranged from Picasso to Warhol to Niki De Saint-Phalle, with each given free reign over the design. While an actual fee was not offered for their endeavors, each received cases of Chateau Mouton from two vintages, including the one for which he or she provided the art. And,

because some of the renderings have been controversial – especially the young nude submitted by Balthus for the 1993 label (which did not make it to bottles sold in the United States), Mouton has final approval of the drawings. As to the wine itself, it’s usually a complex, cassis-scented blend of predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon and smaller amounts of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot that since 1973 has been classified as one of the great wines (“First Growths”) of Bordeaux.

Beginning in 1974, the Italian vintner Vietti (located in the northern Piedmonte area of the country), has commissioned different contemporary artists to design labels for its wines. The concept was originated by then proprietor Alfredo Currado (son-in-law of founder Mario Vietti), and the renderings have ranged from silkscreens to etchings to gouaches and have served to display the works of the artists to

a wide audience, with a exhibit of many of these labels held at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in1996. Currently, the most prized works are affixed to the critically acclaimed single-vineyard Barolos, with bottles of the 2001 Villero Riserva ($300 each) featuring a Surrealistic label and an elegant bouquet and taste of ripe fruit and spice that has a smooth, memorable finish.

Of the top-tier California vintners producing bottles with memorable artwork specifically for the label, two stand out – Justin Vineyards & Winery and Sky Vineyards. While Justin Vineyards, located in Paso Robles, is best-known for its exceptional Isosceles blend, a different American or international artist is selected each year to design a label only for the single vineyard varietal wines produced, like Cabernet Sauvignon. The reason for this is that the owners feel that “the truest expression of

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the unique properties of a specific vintage are best shown in a single varietal” and therefore, only such bottles rate a different artistic label each year. The 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon ($25 a bottle) shows a deep purple color, a bouquet and taste of cassis, plums and spice – perfect to mate with chicken and veal.

At boutique producer Sky Vineyards, located atop Mount Veder in Napa, the owner Lore Olds creates new labels for each year’s production of Zinfandel and Syrah. Working from a photograph, he draws the picture on a slab of rubber which is then hand-cut, with each label individually stamped with the impression.

The dark red 2007 Sky Zinfandel ($30 a bottle) has a complex bouquet and taste of fruit and spice that matches well with lamb and barbecued chicken.

And its label gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “rubber-stamped.” n

wheels

Metalmettle Photographer Michael Alan Ross turns cars into art

M

ost automotive photographers strive to get perfect lighting on their subject, with the complete car being the main focus of the image. Michael Alan Ross thinks of cars a bit differently. More like a painter looking at a barn on a hill. How does the barn fit into and complement the surrounding landscape? What features and details make the car unique? Michael’s images transcend the subject matter and become more of a beautiful composition – automotive fine art.

Michael grew up in the ’60s in Northern California, in the center of car culture. When he turned 9, his father gave him two gifts that would change his life – a guitar and a camera. Michael took to both with surprising skill, practicing the guitar while honing his photography skills at California car shows. Considering his mother was a painter, it was soon clear he inherited her creativity and eye for composition. In 1970 at age 14, he experienced a major culture shock when he moved to New Jersey. His 501 Levis jeans, cowboy boots and white T-shirt made him stand out from his teenage peers, while the cars themselves were just as foreign. The “channeled” and highly modified East Coast hot rod scene was very different from the tweaked “highboys” of California.

Through high school and beyond, Michael was shooting cars for fun and playing guitar for a living. While his photography business and reputation grew throughout 72

By Roger Garbow Photographs by Michael Alan Ross

Michael Alan Ross. Photograph by Fadil Berisha

the ensuing years, including doing work for Porsche, he was still shooting mostly high-line exotics, sports and collector cars. In 2007, Michael experienced a major epiphany when he traveled to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for SpeedWeeks. (After watching the Anthony Hopkins film “The World’s Fastest Indian” and meeting a current

day land-speed competitor, Michael knew he had to see the Flats and the racers in person.) That first trip opened up a whole new world of automobiles to him and as Michael freely admits, “changed everything.” His images from Bonneville are hauntingly beautiful and appeal to a much wider audience than the typical enthusiast crowd.

Today, he works out of the Rowayton home he shares with his wife, Danielle. Michael’s Hollywood good looks and easygoing manner are just as memorable as his photography and make him a favorite of car owners and manufacturers alike. While Bonneville is now a staple on his calendar every August, he can still be found at major sports car races and concours events.

Michael is currently at work on a photo book showcasing rock stars who are motoring enthusiasts, bringing together his two passions. His subjects include J. Geils, Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford, AC/DC front man Brian Johnson, and Long Island’s own Billy Joel. The featured photo of piano man Joel with one of his many motorcycles is stunning – gritty and beautiful at the same time. As Michael says, “the cars are unique, but so are the people.

I’ve met some amazing folks and have had some incredible experiences. But the possibilities are endless. Every day and every car are different. That’s the cool thing about cars.”

Not one to rest, Michael is also in negotiations with a prominent New York gallery for a new one-man show of his prints. In the meantime, his work can be found on his website, michaelalanross.com. n

“Blue on Blue 32,” a study of a ‘32 Ford Tudor on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

A classic MG, taken at the Saragtoga 73 Automobile Museum’s Annual Invitational.

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2011 - 2012

TREASURING THE CLASSICS,

EMBRACING OUR ARTISTIC FUTURE

Benjamin Barber • Wed 9/14

Kyle Abraham • Fri 2/3

World Dance Party • Fri 9/16

Dan Zanes & Friends • Sat 2/11

Yuja Wang, piano • Sun 10/16

The Newberry Consort • Sun 2/12

Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio • Fri 10/21

Gil Shaham, violin • Sat 2/25

Brooklyn Babylon • Sat 10/22

David Finckel, cello & Wu Han, piano • Sun 3/11

Audra McDonald in Concert • Sat 10/29

Circus Incognitus • Sun 3/18

Budapest Festival Orchestra • Sun 10/30

SpokFrevo Orquestra • Thu 3/29

Schola Cantorum de Venuzuela • Sat 11/5

Corella Ballet Castilla y León • Sat 4/21

Crafts on Stage • Sat & Sun 11/5 & 11/6

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra • Sun 4/29

The Star Keeper • Sun 11/13

Martha Graham Dance Company • Sat 5/5

Paul Taylor Dance Company • Sat 11/19

We Built This City • Sat & Sun 5/12 & 5/13

St. Lawrence String Quartet • Sun 12/11

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75

well

TheBe realistic artwhenof limitation it comes to ‘sculpting’ yourself

O

By Michael Rosenberg, MD

ne of the most common questions I hear has to do with celebrities and people wanting to know “Did they or didn’t they?” and, if they did, how can we tell? There is a fascination that we have with the glamour and the myth of plastic surgery, and sometimes even we practitioners of the art and science of this specialty can lose sight of the surgical boundaries. Specifically, what is realistically possible to achieve, and perhaps more important, what is worthwhile?

After the recent glut of so-called reality TV portrayals of both plastic surgeons and their patients, people have come to believe that almost anything is possible. This month I would like to share some thoughts on the “real” real-

ity of what we do, and offer my readers some tips on how to think about the process and how to approach a consultation for cosmetic surgery.

The first and most important point is to have a firm grip on what your goals are and what you hope to achieve with surgery, from body contouring to facial rejuvenation. Although this sounds straightforward, there are some real potential stumbling blocks here.

Surgery should only be considered for personal growth and change and not to please someone else. The changes desired must be directly related to the procedure. For example, “I want to look fresher and more rested” is a common and very reasonable motivation for eyelid surgery. In the right patient, this result can often be achieved by a skilled surgeon. Be wary of any promis-

es that go beyond that, and understand the risks and benefits of undertaking treatment.

This brings me to my second point.

Understand that there are limits to any procedure, and keep your expectations in line with reality. Here is where the role of the experienced surgeon becomes critical. Having the necessary qualifications and understanding when to say “no” can be the most important qualities to look for in a potential cosmetic surgeon. A quality plastic surgeon will take the time to listen to his or her patients and to understand what the real goals and motivations are.

These insights then need to be examined carefully in the light of the surgeon’s own experience and knowledge.

Where the desired goal cannot be realistically achieved, it is the surgeon’s

The best you is what we do.

responsibility to explain and educate.

People have a right to know why surgery might not be the best option for them, and when this information is passed from surgeon to patient in an empathic way, a true service has been done. If it takes a surgeon many years of training and practice to refine his art, it can take a lifetime to learn when the patient is best-served by not having surgery. That’s the surgeon I would like taking care of me and my family.

In conclusion, there are wonderful things that can be achieved with plastic surgery, as long as the patient has proper motivation and goals, realistic expectations and a surgeon who knows the difference between the reel and the real worlds.

Please send any questions or comments to mrosenberg@nwhc.net n

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well

The right (hormonal) stuff

I

By Erika T. Schwartz, MD

have a patient who is an opera singer.

She is a beautiful human being. Before I had even met her, she had sent me a slew of her young students to have their hormones balanced, because she knew their voices needed my help. When I finally met her, I was struck by her dignity, humility and warmth. If you are fortunate to hear her sing, her magnificent voice spools out of her like soothing honey.

When she was in her late 30s, she suffered from a severe medical condition that left her unable to sing at performance level. For years, she only taught others how to use their voices, convinced her performing days were behind her.

She came to me, because she was feeling badly in perimenopause. She hoped I could help her feel better.

She did not expect to get her singing voice back.

Miraculously, however, hormones combined with lots of care and love from a de-

voted opera-singer husband and an immense amount of passion on her part, brought her performing voice back. She now appears on the stages of the most famous opera houses in the world at the age of 52.

Her story is not typical. Most singers peak around 35 and start losing their operatic voices by 45. Sometimes, you see a different outcome. But people like sopranos Kirsten Flagstad and Birgit Nilsson are few and far between.

With age, vocal cords become less flexible, the diaphragm more rigid, lung capacity diminishes. It’s a confluence of mechanical and physiological changes that age brings on, leaving even masters like Barbara Streisand unable to produce “The Way We Were” as magically at 60 as she did at 30.

But interestingly enough, when artists like the patient I was telling you about and the many I see in my practice commit to maintaining or even enhancing their talents, hormones often play a deciding role.

By hormones I mean estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid and even growth hormone.

The addition of hormones in bioidentical forms (molecularly identical to the body’s hormones but made from plant substances like soy and yam oils) – in proper doses and formulations, creating “perfect” cocktails – is often what helps the artist protect his or her talent from extinction.

So, why are we so confused about the role of hormones? Why do we associate hormones with performance enhancement at a young age – when we don’t really need them – versus the invaluable help they provide at the age of 50 when they can save careers and lives?

Performance-enhancing hormones in the young are anabolic steroids, drugs that are not in any way related to the bioidenticals I spoke of before.

Anabolic steroids and growth hormone are used by baseball players, bodybuilders, football players – pretty much the entire

muscle-focused world – to build stamina and power. They create “superhumans” who nevertheless suffer from organ damage, low sex drive, infertility and other systemic problems. Young people don’t need hormones to enhance their already revved-up metabolism. They need to eat well, sleep and exercise to achieve peak performance without long-term dangers. And they need to have reasonable expectations.

Athletes peak at the younger end of the spectrum. Imagine a Nadia Comaneci trying to win a gold metal in gymnastics at 30. Not a chance, you say. But how about 95-year-old Ida Keeling, who, coached by her daughter Shelley, ran her first race at 67?

So what is the mystery? I’m sure Ida isn’t taking anabolic steroids.

In the case of the bird who soars when no one else expects it, I believe it’s passion, commitment and support.

For the rest of us who aren’t the rare birds of art or sport, hormones can be real helpers. n

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watch

Dr. Richard Goldstein with Prince Lorenzo Borghese

Dana Rocco, Dr. Patricia McLoughlin Haight, Dr. David Haight and Grace Forster, of “Doggie Moms.”

Michael Barrett, Peter Harckham, Nita Lowey and Jim Attwood

Marie Shelto with Bocker the Labradoodle

Stella Panzarino, Lisa Alexander and Renee Eck

Nina and Michael Stanton

Waggin’ at Wykagyl

The New Rochelle Humane Society ushered in “Year 100” with a Centennial Celebration at Wykagyl Country Club. A roster of stars – the four-legged variety and 200 of the two-legged kind – came out for the event, raising close to $110,000 for the humane society.

Photographs by J.Frazz Photography

Nancy Levin and Sara Mahoney

Emma Milano

David Swope and Zita Rosenthal

Nautical night

Ahoy, mateys! Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts celebrated the opening of its 66th International Music Festival with a splendid performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” in the Venetian Theater, accompanied by the eminent Orchestra of St. Luke’s. The look that night was nautical chic and there was plenty to be had on deck as stylish gala guests partied after dark with the “Pinafore” crew.

Photographs by Gabe Palacio

Lana Cekej

Hot cars, delectable dishes

Mercedes-Benz of White Plains hosted a “Savor and Support” soirée for My Sisters’ Place, an organization seeking to put an end to domestic violence. Elegant friends and supporters were treated to delectable dishes and drinks from Bellota at 42, BLT Steak, Captain Lawrence Brewing Co., Serafina, Benjamin Steakhouse and Westchester Burger Co. Photographs by Kelly Liyakasa Jordan Sammarco and Ryan Judson

Arbresha Sinanaj and Linda Gjonbalaj

Want to be in WagWatch? Send your soirée info and event images to Kelly Liyakasa at KL@wagmag.com 79

watch Oh, what a night

Because we believe that all work and no play makes us very dull indeed, Westfair Communications hosted a cocktail party July 26 to introduce the area to WAG and the Westchester and Fairfield County Business Journals – three of the mainstays in our portfolio of publications. Toscana Restaurant in Ridgefield was packed, and the conversation and ideas flowed like the wine. Call us biased, but we think the 120-some guests would agree that the night was a rousing success.

Photographs by ŠDavid Bravo

Kathryn Moschella, Leigh Maneri and Meri Hopkins

Michelle Ferris, Wagger Chrisine Corrigan and Jennifer Danielle Bournos Pappas

Nancy Hamlen, Roger Garbow and Denise Cox

Helder and Dorothy Prata

Angela Syc and Jeanette Paglioco

Nancy DiChiosa and Richard Georges

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Rick Castro

Matthew True

Stuart Lasky, Anne Jordan, Roxanne Lasky and Jed Wilson

Morton Dean with Kristen Jensen and her son

TOSCANA MIXER JULY 26

Lia Grasso

Tricia Arcata

thank you RAFFLE GIFT DONORS Adam Broderick The Cake Box Casali Development The Danbury Whalers

Lonnie Pola

Jeanette Paglioco and Wendy Pola

DaSilva Law Firm Denise Cox Designs The Dowling Group Fairfield County Business Journal Forevergreen Soaps Four Seasons Racquet Club Hotel Zero Degrees The Ives Concert Park Matthew True Wells Fargo Advisors Monticello Motor Club Natures Temptations No. 9 Cheese & Wine The Quilters Alley

Leigh Maneri and James Contacessa

Irene Cosaro of Neiman Marcus

Ridgefield Equestrian Center Ridgefield Playhouse Ridgefield Tennis Club Saybrook Point Inn & Spa Suburban Couture Toscana Restaurant The Toy Box WAG Westchester County Business Journal Westport Country Playhouse

Stacey R. Hascoe, Andrew B. Hascoe and Lori Woll

Winvian Resort and Spa

81

watch Egyptian sensation

Susan Fraysse Russ and Eileen Price Farbman

Susan Lifflander, Shelley Baldwin and Annette Brown

The Hudson River Museum drew 300 guests to a “Voyage on the Nile” benefit, with proceeds going to the museum and its exhibitions. At the event, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino presented the honoree, Yonkers’ Mayor Philip Amicone, with a county proclamation for his eight years of service to the city and the county.

Photographs courtesy of the Hudson River Museum

Rob Astorino, museum Board chairwoman Jan Adelson and museum Director Michael Botwinick

Clay Lifflander

(Chefs’) Hats off!

Culinary students at New Rochelle’s Monroe College served up Italian cuisine to delighted guests at “A Chef’s Legacy” benefit, all in support of the college’s study-abroad scholarship program. It was certainly good preparation for the students’ journey around the Mediterranean.

Mike Divney, White Plains Mayor Tom Roach, Jonathan Spitalny, Branford Marsalis and Jon Schandler

Celeb tee-off

Corey Schneider, Stephen J. Jerome, president, Monroe College and Paul Mass

Ahmad Rashad and Bob Costas

Here’s a touchdown and a hole in one. A sold-out Ahmad Rashad Celebrity Golf Tournament kicked off the summer scene at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale in support of White Plains Hospital.

The Emmy Award-winning sportscaster and former NFL superstar was joined by sports notables like Bob Costas, Herb Williams and Ron Harper.

Marc Jerome, executive vice president, Monroe College

Chris Wragge

Len Berman and Eli Manning

Above-par support

Sharon Gellman, Leslie Jerome and Roberta Greenberg

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Rose and Anthony Coschigano III

Celebrities, philanthropists and athletes, oh my! Autism Speaks’ 13th annual N.Y. Celebrity Golf Challenge at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck raised nearly $1 million for autism awareness and research. The event boasted a star-studded guest list – New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning, CBS’ “Early Show” co-host Chris Wragge and former News 4 New York sports anchor Len Berman, among them.

Photographs by Bob Malone for Autism Speaks

Vive la France!

Patrick Lachaussée, consul general adjoint de France à New York

Renee Ketcham, co-president Alliance Française of Greenwich and restaurateur Marc Penvenne, owner of Méli-Mélo

Claude Lourie and Bea Crumbine, Greenwich ambassador-at-large

Méli-Mélo pastry chef Maxime Ollivier

Peter J. Tesei, first selectman, town of Greenwich

Méli-Mélo executive catering chef Cedric Lamouille

Patrick Lachaussée, consul general adjoint de France a New York and Jean Lachaud, president, The American Society of Le Souvenir Français Inc.

Anna and Alexis Bedos

Alliance Française of Greenwich raised French and American flags in the presence of Philippe Lalliot, the consul general of France in New York, and Peter J. Tesei, first selectman of Greenwich, commemorating Bastille Day (July 14), France’s Fourth of July. A newly expanded MéliMélo Crêperie on Greenwich Avenue served a complimentary petit dejeuner — breakfast to us Yanks — after the flag ceremony.

Evelyn Penvenne and Serge Gabriel at Méli-Mélo in Greenwich

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time THROUGH TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 En plein air

An exhibit featuring work by Thomas Locker, including his paintings of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, Gallery in the Park, Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Route 35 and 121 South, Cross River. (914) 864-7317, kandcgallery.com.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 Aww, shucks

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 Tees and nets

A fundraiser for The Children’s Village featuring brunch, golf, tennis, cocktail reception, dinner, raffle and awards, 12:30 p.m. shotgun golf start; 1 p.m. tennis; 5:30 p.m. dinner, Saint Andrew’s Golf Club, 10 Old Jackson Ave., Hastings-on-Hudson. $2,500 golf foursome; $625 per golfer; $300 tennis. (914) 693-0600, ext. 1224, childrensvillage.org.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 ‘Women are Marvelous’

Norwalk Seaport Association’s 34th Oyster Festival features art, a BMX and motocross stunt show and more, 6 to 11 p.m. Sept. 9; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.Sept.

10; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sept. 11, Veteran’s Park, Fort Point Street and Seaview Avenue, East Norwalk. $12; $10 seniors; $3 children (ages 5 to 12). (203) 838-9444, seaport.org.

Author, humorist and feminist Gina Barreca serves as keynote speaker at a benefit for the Danbury Visiting Nurse Association, featuring dinner, a cash bar, prize drawings and book signing, 5:30 to 10 p.m., Ethan Allen Hotel, 21 Lake Avenue Extension, Danbury. $55. (203) 792-4120, danburyvna. org.

Aqua fest

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 tender tresses

A boutique show with family activities such as kayaking and canoeing excursions, face painting, nature games and more, preview party: 6 to 8 p.m.

Sept. 9; showcase 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 10; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 11, Delamar Greenwich Harbor, 500 Steamboat Road, Greenwich. $75 preview party. (203) 531-3047, thedelamar.com.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 ‘Applause for PAWS’

Contests, obedience and rally demos, police dog and rescue presentations held in honor of canine service heroes and their handlers in memory of 9/11, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., 100 Canal St., Shelton.

(203) 558-5911, trapfalls.org.

‘Hot’ dogs

An event to celebrate Locks of Love, raise awareness and collect hair donations for cancer patients; call to schedule an appointment, Jaafar Tazi Salon, 149 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich. (203) 340-2525, jaafartazi.com.

Barn party

A farm-to-table dinner party featuring farm-fresh goods, wine education and auction, to benefit Audubon Greenwich, 6 to 10 p.m., Ketay-Asnes Barn, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich. $100.

(203) 869-5272, greenwich.audubon.org.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 Arts and crafts

A benefit for the Yonkers Animal Shelter, 10 a.m. registration; noon pageant, EJ Murray Memorial Skating Ice & Roller Skating Rink, 348 Tuckahoe Road, Yonkers. $195 pageant fee; $100 registration. (914) 803-3235.

Crafts and artisan boutiques on Bedford Street, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sept. 18, Bedford Street, Stamford. (203) 348-5285, Stamford-downtown.com

Lighthouse race

Going country

Human-powered vessels race in seven-mile and 14mile courses with a beach party to follow, 9 a.m., Compo Beach, Compo Beach Road, Westport. $50 race participant; $20 guest. (203) 846-9723, lighthousetolighthouserace.com.

Live music and country activities at the 19th annual Homestead Country Fair Weekend, barn dance kickoff, 5 to 9 p.m., Sept. 17; fair hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sept. 18, John Jay Homestead, 400 Jay St., Katonah. $50 to $250; $20 to $30 children. (914) 232-8119, johnjayhomestead.org,

taconic Opera gala

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 The power of music

A benefit featuring a catered dinner and performances by opera singers, 7 p.m., Atria on the Hudson, 321 N. Highland Ave., Ossining. $250, $200, $150. (855) 886-7372, taconicopera.org.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 9/11 day of service and remembrance

In commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 the JCC unites charitable agencies to host activities and drives, followed by a screening of “Love Hate Love”, a documentary on the journeys of families affected by terrorism, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; 4 p.m. film, JCC, 999 Wilmot Road, Scarsdale. $10 film. (914) 472-3300, ext. 403, thebendheim.org.

Polo picnic

A celebration in honor of the Elant Foundation’s 10th anniversary, 1 to 4:30 p.m., Blue Sky Polo Club, 380 Bart Bull Road, Middletown, N.Y. $800 table of eight; $130 per person; $50 children (ages 10 and under). (845) 360-1410, elantfoundation@ elant.org.

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Westchester Philharmonic gala features cocktails, dinner, music and auction, to benefit philharmonic programs, 5 p.m., Brynwood Golf & Country Club, 568 Bedford Road, Armonk. Table for 10 starts at $5,000; tickets start at $175. (914) 6823707, ext. 10, westchesterphil.org.

Wine tasting

Buchanan-Cortlandt-Croton-on-Hudson 9/11 Remembrance hosts a benefit with music, silent auction and raffles to pay tribute to those lost on 9/11 and honor military members, 2 to 5 p.m., Monteverde at Old Stone, 28 Bear Mountain Bridge Road, Cortlandt Manor. $125 per couple; $100.

(914) 271-8222, 9-11remembrance.com.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 THROUGH JULY 22 Global art exhibit

“Circa 1986,” a showcase of 65 pieces of art created between 1981 and 1991 by 47 international artists.

$5 admission; free for members, opening reception 4 to 7 p.m. Sept. 18, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, 1701 Main St., Peekskill. (914) 788-0100, hvcca.org.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 Goin’ for the green

Golf, lunch, cocktails, dinner, raffle and silent auction to benefit SoundWaters, 11 a.m. registration; 11:30 a.m. lunch; 1 p.m. tee off; 5:30 p.m. cocktails, dinner, raffle and auction, Greenwich Country Club, 19 Doubling Road, Greenwich. $2,000 foursome round; $500 golfer. (203) 406-3314, soundwaters.org.

‘Sunday Under the Stars’

Westchester Children’s Museum hosts a charity golf and tennis classic featuring on-court tennis play with tennis star James Blake, golf: 10 a.m. registration and brunch; 10 to 11:45 a.m. driving range open; noon shotgun start; 5 p.m. awards, cocktail reception; tennis: 8:30 a.m. player box check-in and VIP breakfast; 9:30 a.m. courtside check-in; 10 a.m. tennis clinic; 1 p.m. lunch and Q&A. Quaker Ridge Golf Club, 146 Griffen Ave., Scarsdale. Golf: $2,300 foursome; $575 individual; tennis: $1,000 player box; $500 court side; $100 spectator (lunch only). (914) 421-5050, discoverwcm.org.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Philanthropy on the menu

Caviar, vodka and a discussion with Haley Tanner author of “Vaclav & Lena” at the Westchester Women’s Philanthropy Opening Breakfast, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., Brynwood Golf and Country Club, 568 Bedford Road, Route 22 N., Armonk. $100; $50 for donors of $365 or more to the 2012 Annual Campaign. (914) 761-5100, ext. 124, ackermans@ ujafedny.org.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 ‘Women on the Move’

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s benefit luncheon with guest speaker Kristie Salerno Kent, a musician and songwriter diagnosed with MS in 1999, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Trump National Golf Club, 339 Pine Road, Briarcliff. Tickets start at $125. (914) 694-1654, nationalmssociety.org.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 Boat show

In-water show featuring the season’s vessels, gadgets and gear, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Norwalk Cove Marina, 48 Calf Pasture Beach Road, Norwalk. $14.

(718) 707-0711, boatshownorwalk.com.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 Caramoor fest

New York Philharmonic performance with Alan Gilbert, conductor, and Augustin Hadelich, violin, 7:30 p.m., Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Venetian Theater, 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah. $112.50; $95.50; $78.50; $61.50; $44.50.

(914) 232-1492, caramoor.org.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 Food and wine

Wine sampling, seminars, food and cooking demonstrations and musical entertainment, 3 to 9 p.m., Mill River Park, Mill River and West Broad streets, Stamford. $35 at the door; $27 in advance; $10

designated driver ticket. (847) 382-1480, stamfordwinefestival.com.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 An evening with Kelli O’Hara

Caramoor Fall Festival continues with three-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O’Hara, 8 p.m., 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah. $67, $54, $41, $28, $15. (914) 232-1252, caramoor.org.

‘Feed Me Fresh: An Edible Evening’

New Orleans-style jazz, food tastings and auctions, to benefit Mount Kisco Child Care Center, 6:30 p.m., Ivanna Farms, 153 Wood Road, Bedford Corners. $175. (914) 241-2135, ext. 243, mkccc.org.

Wine and dine

Live blues by Big Joe Fitz, silent and live auctions, a four-course dinner and international wine tasting to benefit Greystone Programs, serving people with disabilities; 2:30 to 9 p.m., Poughkeepsie Tennis Club, 135 Hamilton St., Poughkeepsie. $125.

(845) 452-5772, ext. 119, greystoneprograms.org.

Oktoberfest

A festival with a German flair, featuring a silent auction, music, games and dancing, 6 p.m., Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, 4 Horseneck Lane, Greenwich. Tickets start at $195. (203) 869-2221, unitedway-greenwich.org.

Night of jazz

Westchester Jazz Orchestra kicks off its ninth season with Grammy-winning saxophonist Joe Lovano, 7:15 p.m. chat with Lovano; 8 p.m. concert, Irvington Town Hall Theater, 85 Main St., Irvington. $40 adults; $35 seniors; $10 students. (914) 591-6602, westjazzorch.org.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 Pedal power

A 20- or 57-mile bike race to benefit MS Southern NY, 6:15 a.m. site opens; 7:15 a.m. ride, start/finish Kraft Foods, 555 S. Broadway, Tarrytown. Registration (plus $150 fundraising minimum): $100 after Sept. 24; $50 by Sept. 23. (212) 463-7787, bikenyn.nationalmssociety.org.

Slice of fun

Laughing Pizza band performs at a benefit for The Tiny Miracles Foundation, 2 to 5 p.m., Wee Burn Beach Club, 5 Anchor Road, Rowayton. Kelleychapman@ttmf.org, ttmf.org.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2 Garden concert

Singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash performs with Jon Leventhal, a Grammy winner and producer, at a benefit for Family ReEntry, doors open at noon; 12:30 p.m. luncheon; 2 p.m. performance, Bydale Garden, Richmond Hill Road at John St., Greenwich. $500, $300, $200. (203) 838-0496, ext. 100, familyreentry.org.

‘Concorso d’Eleganza’

A celebration of Italian art, style and engineering with prizes, entertainment and a showcase of more than 100 classic autos and motorcycles, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Depot Square, Tuckahoe (at the MetroNorth train station). $10; proceeds benefit Westchester Italian Cultural Center. (914) 771-8700, wiccny.org.

Hounds on the Sound

A dog walk-a-thon and festival with contests, music and activities to raise funds for Pet Rescue and the New Rochelle Humane Society, 10 a.m. regis-

tration; 11:30 a.m. walk begins, Glen Island Park, Pehlham Road, New Rochelle. $40 family (two adults plus children); $25. (718) 885-2587, houndsonthesound.org.

Walk with a cause

Support Connection hosts a three-mile walk for breast and ovarian cancer, 9 a.m. pre-walk activities; 10 a.m. walk begins, FDR State Park, 2957 Crompound Road, Yorktown Heights. (914) 9626402, supportconnection.org.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5 Power of the Purse

A gala to recognize powerful women features cocktails, silent and live auction, a fashion show, hors d’oeuvres, to benefit Girls Inc. of Westchester County, 6 to 9 p.m., LIFE: The Place to Be, 2 Lawrence St., Ardsley. Girlsincwestchester.org.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6 Fall refresh fashion

WAG and Warren Tricomi present “Look Fabulous,” 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Warren Tricomi, 1 E. Putnam Road, Greenwich. Limited complimentary seating. (203) 733-4545.

THROUGH MAY 2012 Tree figures

Artist Joseph Wheelwright’s 27-foot-tall sculptures invite a dialogue between the natural and the manmade, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, Katonah Museum of Art, Sculpture Garden and South Lawn, 134 Jay St., Katonah. $5; $3 seniors and students; free 10 a.m.to noon Tuesday to Friday. (914) 232-9555, katonahmuseum.org.

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worthyarts venues ABBY M. TAYLOR FINE ART L.L.C. 43 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 622 0906 amtfineart.com

CARRIAGE BARN ARTS CENTER 681 South Ave., New Canaan, CT 06840 (203) 972-1895 carriagebarn.org

ADELAIDE FINE ART 84 Main St., New Canaan, CT 06840 (203) 966-3300 adelaidefineart.com

CAVALIER GALLERIES INC. 405 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 869-3664 cavaliergalleries.com

ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 258 Main St., Ridgefield, CT 06877 (203) 438-4519 aldrichart.org ANELLE GANDELMAN FINE ART P.O. Box 504, Larchmont, NY 10538 (914) 840-4151 anellegandelman.com

CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY PRINTMAKING Mathews Park, 299 West Ave. Norwalk, CT 06850 (203) 899-7999 contemprints.org

CENTER FOR DIGITAL ARTS AT WESTCHESTER COMMUNITY COLLEGE 27 N. Division St., Peekskill, NY 10566 ARTSWESTCHESTER’S ARTS EXCHANGE (914) 606-7304 sunywcc.edu 31 Mamaroneck Ave. White Plains, NY 10601 THE CHAPPAQUA ORCHESTRA (914) 428-4220 P.O. Box 461, Chappaqua, NY 10514 artswestchester.org (914) 238-9220 chappaquaorchestra.org AVON THEATRE FILM CENTER 272 Bedford St., Stamford, CT 06901 CHARLES R. DECARLO (203) 967-3660 PERFORMING ARTS CENTER avontheatre.org 1 Mead Way, Yonkers, NY 10708 (914) 337-0700 AXIAL THEATRE slc.edu 1305 White Hill Road Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 CURTAIN CALL INC. (914) 962-8828 1349 Newfield Ave., Stamford, CT 06905 axialtheatre.org (203) 329-8207 curtaincallinc.com BARNUM MUSEUM (closed for renovation) DARIEN ARTS CENTER 820 Main St., Bridgeport, CT 06604 2 Renshaw Road, Darien, CT 06820 (203) 331-1104 (203) 655-8683 barnum-museum.org arts.darien.org BENDHEIM GALLERY 299 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, CT 06830 DIA: BEACON 3 Beekman St., Beacon, NY 12508 (203) 862-6750 (845) 440-0100 greenwicharts.org diabeacon.org BENDHEIM PERFORMING DOWNTOWN CABARET THEATRE ARTS CENTER 999 Wilmot Road, Scarsdale, NY 10583 263 Golden Hill St., Bridgeport, CT 06604 (203) 576-1636 (914) 472-3300, ext. 403 connquest.com thebendheim.org BOSCOBEL HOUSE AND GARDENS 1601 Route 9D, Garrison, NY 10524 (845) 265-3638 boscobel.org

DOWNTOWN MUSIC AT GRACE 33 Church St., White Plains, NY 10601 (914) 949-0384 dtmusic.org

BRUCE MUSEUM 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 869-0376 brucemuseum.com

EDGERTON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS Sacred Heart University 5151 Park Ave., Fairfield, CT 06825 (203) 371-7908 edgertoncenter.org

BUSH HOLLEY HOUSE 39 Strickland Road, Cos Cob, CT 06807 (203) 869-6899 hstg.org BUTLER FINE ART 134 Elm St., New Canaan, CT 06840 (203) 966-2274 butlerfineart.com CANFIN GALLERY 39 Main St., Tarrytown, NY 10591 (914) 332-4554 canfingallery.com

EDWARD HOPPER HOUSE ART CENTER 82 N. Broadway, Nyack, NY 10960 (845) 358-0774 yearofedwardhopper.com EMELIN THEATRE 153 Library Lane, Mamaroneck, NY 10543 (914) 698-0098 emelin.org FAIRFIELD ARTS CENTER 70 Sanford St., Fairfield, CT 06824 (203) 319-1419 fairfieldartscenter.org

CARAMOOR CENTER FOR MUSIC AND ART 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, NY 10536 FANFARE CONSORT (914) 232-1252 P.O. Box 784, Monroe, CT 06468 caramoor.org (203) 733-9733 fanfareconsort.com

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FLEETWOOD STAGE 44 Wildcliff Drive, New Rochelle, NY 10805 (914) 654-8949 fleetwoodstage.org

MAMARONECK ARTISTS GUILD (203) 438-5795 126 Larchmont Ave., Larchmont, NY 10538 ridgefieldplayhouse.org (914) 834-1117 mamaroneckartistsguild.org RIPPOWAM GALLERY 1441 High Ridge Road, Stamford, CT 06903 FORT HILL PLAYERS MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE (203) 595-6488 P.O. Box 427, White Plains, NY 10602 DEPARTMENT OF DANCE & THEATRE rippowamgallery.com (914) 946-5143 2900 Purchase St., Purchase, NY 10577 forthillplayers.com (914) 694-2200 ROCKLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS manhattanville.edu 27 S. Greenbush Road GAGA ARTS CENTER West Nyack, NY 10994 Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center MICHAEL SCHIMMEL (845) 358-0877 55 W. Railroad Ave., Garnerville, NY 10923 CENTER FOR THE ARTS rocklandartcenter.org (845) 947-7108 Pace University gagaartscenter.org 3 Spruce St., New York, NY 10038 SAW MILL SUMMER THEATRE (212) 346-1589 P.O. Box 452, Chappaqua, NY 10514 GARRISON ART CENTER pace.edu (914) 495-3151 23 Garrison’s Landing, Garrison, NY 10524 sawmillsummertheatre.com (845) 424-3960 MOUNT KISCO CONCERT garrisonartcenter.org ASSOCIATION THE SCHOOLHOUSE THEATER P.O. Box 198, Mount Kisco, NY 10549 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, NY 10519 GENESIS GALLERY (914) 666-9181 (914) 277-8477 2 E. Belvedere Lane, Tarrytown, NY 10591 mkconcerts.com schoolhousetheater.org (917) 454-8332 genesisgallery.com MUSIC CONSERVATORY SHAKESPEARE ON THE SOUND OF WESTCHESTER 177 Rowayton Ave., Rowayton, CT 06853 HAMMOND MUSEUM AND 216 Central Ave., White Plains, NY 10606 (203) 299-1300 JAPANESE STROLL GARDEN (914) 761-3900 shakespeareonthesound.org 28 Deveau Road, North Salem, NY 10560 musicconservatory.org (914) 669-5033 SILVERMINE ARTS CENTER hammondmuseum.org NEUBERGER MUSEUM OF ART 1037 Silvermine Road AT PURCHASE COLLEGE New Canaan, CT 06840 HAND-TO-MOUTH PLAYERS 735 Anderson Hill Road (203) 966-9700 P.O. Box 163, Montrose, NY 10548 Purchase, NY 10577 silvermineart.org (914) 734-4336 (914) 251-6100 htmplayers.com neuberger.org SQUARE ONE THEATRE COMPANY 2422 Main St., Stratford, CT 06615 HOUSATONIC MUSEUM OF ART NEW CHORAL SOCIETY (203) 375-8778 Housatonic Community College 6 Greenacres Ave., Scarsdale, NY 10583 squareonetheatre.com 900 Lafayette Blvd., Bridgeport, CT 06604 (914) 725-1678 (203) 332-5052 newchoralsociety.org STAMFORD CENTER FOR THE ARTS hcc.commnet.edu/artmuseum 61 Atlantic St., Stamford, CT 06901 PARAMOUNT CENTER FOR THE ARTS (203) 325-4466 HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM 1008 Brown St., Peekskill, NY 10566 scalive.org 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers, NY 10701 (914) 739-2333 (914) 963-4550 paramountcenter.org STAMFORD MUSEUM hrm.org AND NATURE CENTER PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 39 Scofieldtown Road, Stamford, CT 06903 HUDSON VALLEY CENTER AT PURCHASE COLLEGE (203) 322-1646 FOR CONTEMPORARY ART Purchase College stamfordmuseum.org 1701 Main St., Peekskill, NY 10566 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577 (914) 788-0100 (914) 251-6200 STERLING FARMS hvcca.org artscenter.org THEATRE COMPLEX 1349 Newfield Ave., Stamford, CT 06905 JACOB BURNS FILM CENTER THE PLAY GROUP THEATRE (203) 329-8207 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570 1 N. Broadway, Suite 111 curtaincallinc.com (914) 747-5555 White Plains, NY 10601 burnsfilmcenter.org (914) 946-4433 SUMMER THEATRE OF NEW CANAAN playgroup.org 237 Elm St., New Canaan, CT 06840 KLEIN MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM (203) 966-4634 910 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport, CT 06605 POST ROAD GALLERY stonc.org (203) 292-8164 2128 Boston Post Road theklein.org Larchmont, NY 10538 TAPPAN Z GALLERY (914) 834-7568 51 Main St., Tarrytown, NY 10591 LEVITT PAVILION FOR THE postroadgallery.com (914) 332-8800 PERFORMING ARTS tappanzgallery.com 40 Jesup Road, Westport, CT 06880 QUESTER GALLERY (203) 226-7600 119 Rowayton Ave., Rowayton, CT 06853 THE TARRYTOWN MUSIC HALL levittpavilion.com (203) 523-0250 13 Main St., Tarrytown, NY 10591 questergallery.com (914) 631-3390 LIONHEART GALLERY tarrytownmusichall.org 27 Westchester Ave., Pound Ridge, NY 10576 RED MONKEY THEATER GROUP (914) 764-8689 97 Washington Ave., Third floor THE TOWN PLAYERS lionheartgallery.net Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706 OF NEW CANAAN, (914) 693-1646 POWERHOUSE THEATRE LOCKWOOD-MATTHEWS redmonkeytheater.org 679 South Ave., New Canaan, CT 06840 MANSION MUSEUM (203) 966-7371 295 West Ave., Norwalk, CT 06850 REGINA A. QUICK CENTER FOR THE tpnc.org (203) 838-9799 ARTS AT FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY lockwoodmathewsmansion.com 1073 N. Benson Road UPSTREAM GALLERY Fairfield, CT 06824 26B Main St., Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 MADELYN JORDON FINE ART (203) 254-4000 (914) 674-8548 14 Chase Road, Scarsdale, NY 10583 quickcenter.com upstreamgallery.com (914)723-8738 madelynjordonfineart.com/gallery RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE 80 E. Ridge Ave., Ridgefield, CT 06877

wit wonders: Do you have an artist within?

“I’ve always loved being creative when it comes to art.

Fortunately, there is a certain need for creative art skills in my line of work so I am able to fulfill my artistic side in a way that supports my business. However, I don’t plan on quitting my day job.”

– Paul Bruni co-owner and manager of business development, Bilancio Luxury Fitness Management in Purchase, Portland, N.Y. resident “Definitely an artist within me. I started my career as an elementary school teacher in New York City around the time that television was focusing on developing programs like ‘Sesame Street.’ I used art and music as avenues to create an atmosphere for learning and developing the skills that my students needed to learn. I encourage support for these programs in our schools. As flowers need the rain and sun to bloom, so we should recognize the need to enhance and encourage our children using the artist within us.”

– Evelyn Carnicelli marketing director, Carnell Associates engineering firm, Valhalla, Scarsdale resident “I come from a family of artists but never imagined myself one of them, as I always seemed more mathematically wired. One day when I first started Provisions, it finally hit me that the math and precision of baking were an art in themselves. While I may not be able to draw, I am most definitely an artist and creator.”

– Nannette Conners owner, Pelham Provisions, Pelham resident

“Yes, absolutely. It is my inner muse, which brings balance to my practical side and enables me to have a strong appreciation for art, music and dance as well as dabble with my own creations.”

– Lorraine Dowdey director, Norwalk Land Trust, Norwalk resident “There is most definitely an artist within me, which makes being a cake designer a source of never-ending gratification. Sometimes clients don’t have a clear vision of a cake to suit their occasion. I help them by sitting with them and sketching while we discuss the event and together, we come up with a cake that truly excites them.

That is what makes me tick, and I am so grateful to have been able to build a business upon my love of food and artistry.”

– Michelle Klem pastry chef and owner, CakeSuite in Westport, Fairfield resident “I think it’s safe to say that there is an artist within since I was trained a musician and live that out as organist and choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church in White Plains. The artist within helps me celebrate the artist in others through our weekly Downtown Music at Grace concerts, which present a wonderful roster of professional musicians between October and May. The concerts are popular both with those who have an artist within and those who wish they did.”

– Timothy Lewis managing and artistic director, Downtown Music at Grace, White Plains, Bedford resident

WEBSTER BANK ARENA AT HARBOR YARD 600 Main St., Bridgeport, CT 06604 (203) 345-2400 websterbankarena.com

WESTCHESTER BROADWAY THEATRE 1 Broadway Plaza, Elmsford, NY 10523 (914) 592-2222 broadwaytheatre.com

WEIR FARM ART CENTER 735 Nod Hill Road, Wilton, CT 06897 (203) 761-9945 weirfarmartcenter.org

WESTCHESTER CHAMBER SYMPHONY P.O. Box 207, New Rochelle, NY 10804 (914) 654-4926 westchesterchamberorchestra.org

WESTCHESTER BALLET CENTER 1974 Commerce St., Room 121 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (914) 245-2940 westchesterperformingarts.com

“I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person both personally and professionally. I danced growing up, made my own clothes and jewelry and recently decorated a new apartment from scratch. I also love taking pictures and cooking. Professionally, I feel artistry is always needed to create new fundraising events. Events today need to be fun, inventive and have that wow factor that makes supporters want to attend each year. Over the past year and a half I’ve been able to do just that with three new events in Fairfield County for LLS.” – Dina Mariani deputy executive director, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Connecticut Chapter, Larchmont resident

“I’d have to say there’s definitely an artist within me, but not in the conventional sense. I’m a personal trainer as well as a figure bodybuilding competitor. The way I approach workouts is pretty unconventional and creative. I train my clients the same way. If they request a conventional written program, I can certainly provide that, but that’s not usually why they hire me as opposed to some cookie-cutter trainer. As for drawing and other such conventional artistic ventures, let’s just say even my stick figures have muscles.”

– Lisandra McGrath Personal trainer, Lisandra Be Fit, Chappaqua resident

“I have always envied performing artists, those people who can inspire you or move you to tears with their voice. If I were to be given a wish, it would be to be able to sing – or even to carry a tune for a few bars. I’m still recovering from being told by the music instructor in high school to just ‘move your lips and pretend to sing’ in the annual concert.”

– Catherine Marsh executive director,Westchester Community Foundation, Hartsdale,Croton-on-Hudson resident

“Human beings have a creative core. It is what differentiates our species – whether it is in the use of words, the ability to handle a paint brush or sculpt a form, the sensibility to decorate a room or a hidden space. We bring with us the echo of generations, the memory of the near past and the awareness of the present. How we relate our feelings to others and how others perceive what we do, is part of the artistic process.”

– Livia Straus director and co-founder, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, Chappaqua resident

“There is an artist within each one of us, and it remains our personal decision as to how much of that innate creativity we choose to empower.

Part of the problem is conceiving of ‘art’ exclusively as a created object, rather than as a potential for seeing the world (and our place in it) in new, innovative and rewarding ways.”

– Paul Master-Karnik executive director, Greenwich Arts Council, Stamford resident

WESTCHESTER JAZZ ORCHESTRA P.O. Box 506, Chappaqua, NY 10514 (914) 861-9100 westjazzorch.org WESTPORT ARTS CENTER 51 Riverside Ave., Westport, CT 06880 (203) 222-7070 westportartscenter.org

WESTPORT COMMUNITY THEATRE INC. WESTCHESTER CHORAL SOCIETY 110 Myrtle Ave., Westport, CT 06880 216 Central Ave. (203) 226-1983 White Plains, NY 10606 westportcommunitytheatre.com (914) 761-3900, ext. 103 westchesterchoralsociety.org

– Compiled by Alissa Frey Contact her at afrey@westfairinc.com

WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE 25 Powers Court, Westport, CT 06880 (203) 227-4177 westportplayhouse.org

WOODWARD HALL THEATRE AT PACE UNIVERSITY 235 Elm St., Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510 (866) 722-3338 pace.edu

WHITE PLAINS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 11 City Place, White Plains, NY 10601 (914) 328-1600 wppac.com

YORKTOWN STAGE 1974 Commerce St. Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (914) 962-0606 yorktownstage.org

THE WILTON PLAYSHOP 15 Lovers Lane, Wilton, CT 06897 (203) 762-7629 wiltonplayshop.org

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class&sass

By Martha Handler and Jennifer Pappas Photograph by Susan Bowlus

Ever since I’ve had school-age kids, I’ve found September to be sublime.

This is especially true since I’ve experienced the summer invasion of my college kids.

I don’t know if it’s because they’re boys or because they’ve been living independently, but their re-entry into civilization (our home) has been nothing short of anarchy.

The entire house looks like a dozen Pigpens from the “Peanuts” gang have been swirling around, kicking up dust, dishes and endless heaps of laundry, to which they are completely oblivious. (“Really? You think the kitchen is messy?” or “It wasn’t me.”) In a fit of rage, I recently dragged them outside and pointed to the front of the house. “Do you see any Greek letters posted there?” I asked. They looked at me like I was crazy (typical). “No, you don’t,” I answered for them, “because this isn’t a fraternity house.

It’s our home, and you need to treat it as such.” They patted me on my shoulders and kissed the top of my head and I realized that for now, at least, that is probably as sublime a summer moment as I can expect! right. It’s a full-time job J Summer, just keeping those kids busy and occupied while they’re home from school. I feel as if I should adopt a driver’s cap as my main accessory, because that’s all I seem to do during the “not so lazy” more like crazy days of summer. And they’re so bossy!

M

“Drive me here. Drive me there.” I feel like I’m a one-man entertainment committee, living in my car and eating on the run. It’s the ultimate “roach motel.” I swear I saw one scurrying about the other day in my rearview mirror. Come the end of their last day at home, I’ve been to the mall and movies more times than I care to admit.

And don’t even get me started on those darn amusement parks. It’s exhausting.

I like camp. I think it’s a great idea. And the camps now are amazing! Have you ever taken a gander at some of those brochures?

What the heck. I mean, my summer consisted of running through a sprinkler and spitting watermelon seeds at one another, not sunning myself on the banks of some exotic beach in the Mediterranean.

Hawaii, which is where my M Or daughter spent her summer. For many years I used the Camp Experts (campexperts.com) to find the perfect camp for my kids. But this year my daughter insisted on doing her own research.

Before signing on the dotted line, I briefly skimmed the brochure of the teen trip she chose and was happy to discover that it included a mix of cultural and sporting activities on the West Coast and Hawaii. I didn’t realize I’d been bamboozled until she texted me from Beverly Hills (subsequently it was Las Vegas and Hawaii) to see if I could add a “tad” more cash to her debit card because

the stores had clothes that were “unlike anything in New York.” (She sounds way more like your daughter than mine!) Perhaps there was a typo in the brochure and what they meant was couture and not culture! Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll read the fine print a bit more carefully.

Feel my pain, girlfriend. Don’t forget J that I have THREE girls to contend with. Keeping them properly clothed and coiffed is ridiculously expensive. The numbers on my credit card are practically worn away from overuse. Shopping has become the number one recreational activity in our household. It used to be relaxing. Not anymore. And while we are on the subject of shopping, what’s up with the mirrors in those changing rooms? I mean really. The whole experience is so unsettling. It’s not rocket science, storeowner people. You’ll sell more merchandise if you don’t make your customers look like they’re full of cellulite (which they are not), dimply and blotchy. I swear to you that I don’t need that much wattage pumping at me while I am trying on a swimsuit. Ugh. Who invented fluorescent lighting anyway? It must have been a man, because a woman would never want to see her image beneath those hideous things. Here’s a little hint…

SCONCES. how about dressing rooms with M Or dimmer switches? Honestly, I’m just

thankful my eyesight went at the same time that my body did.

Q – Is there any acceptable way to tell a friend or loved one that their table manners aren’t quite up to snuff?

A – Not unless the loved ones are your children. Then it’s your duty to tell them over and over again until it sinks into their still somewhat absorbent brains lest they become the adults with the table manners of a 2-year-old that you can no longer scold.

Q. – What is a good tactic for letting the person sitting next to you on the plane know you don’t want to converse?

A – Quickly don your headphones. If caught off guard, tell them you’re a pastry chef. It’s a conversation killer.

Wag Up • Dinner parties (Hosted by someone other than me.) – J • Churchill’s in Mount Kisco... For the hottest, hippest clothes around. (For that dinner party that you’re not hosting.) - J Wag Down • Dinner guests that monopolize the conversation or are one-uppers. (No matter what anyone says, they’ve done the same thing better, bigger and longer.) – M • Family members who drink directly out of the milk or O.J containers. - M

“

You both are true masters

(Drs. Kenneth Magid and Sabrina Magid) when it comes to dental work.

My teeth are picture perfect! Not only is my smile truly amazing, but by widening my smile, you have completely transformed my face.”

—Melissa Marcogliese, WAG’s 2010 Makeover contest winner

SPONSOR

The WAG’s 2011 Makeover

Unretouched photos Photos by Jamie Kilgore

As part of the “Extreme Makeover” team as seen on ABC-TV Dr. Magid has created the beautiful smiles of TV and stage personalities and some of your Westchester neighbors. They just look so natural you can’t tell. As an Associate Professor of Esthetics he teaches dentists from around the world the techniques and artistry of cosmetic dentistry. Along with Dr. Sabrina Magid they offer the latest technology in dental care including the ability to see what you would look like with a cosmetic makeover with just a photo.

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Dr. Kenneth Magid. & Dr. Sabrina Magid 163 Halstead Ave., Harrison » (914) 835-0542 » www.ADofW.com

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